THE  DAYS  OF  A  MAN 

VOLUME   ONE 
1851-1899 


HULDAH  HAWLEY  JORDAN,   1876 


THE  DAYS  OF  A  MAN 

BEING  MEMORIES 

OF  A  NATURALIST,  TEACHER 

AND  MINOR  PROPHET  OF 

DEMOCRACY 

.T 

BY  DAVID  STARR  JORDAN 

ILLUSTRATED 
VOLUME    ONE 


1851 


1899 


Jungle  and  town  and  reef  and  sea, 
I  have  loved  God's  earth  and  God's 
earth  loved  me, 

Take  it  for  all  in  all! 


Yonkers-on-Hudson,  New  York 

WORLD  BOOK  COMPANY 

1922 


Of  this  limited  edition  of  "The  Days  of  a  Man" 
there  have  been  printed  on  hand-made  paper  and 
signed  by  the  author  three  hundred  and  ninety 
sets  only,  of  which  this  is  number  72. 


Copyright  1922  by  World  Book 
Company.  Copyright  in  Great 
Britain.  All  rights  reserved, 


TO   BARBARA'S  MOTHER 

WITHOUT   WHOSE    QUIET   INSISTENCE 
THIS    BOOK   WOULD   NEVER  HAVE    BEEN    BEGUN 

AND    EXCEPT    FOR   WHOSE    KEEN 

SYMPATHETIC    CRITICISM   AND   UNFAILING 

HELP    IT   COULD    NEVER   HAVE 

BEEN    COMPLETED 


40793:) 


FOREWORD 

FOR  half  a  century  the  writer  of  these  pages  has 
been  a  very  busy  man,  living  meanwhile  three 
more  or  less  independent  lives:  first,  and  for  the 
love  of  it,  that  of  naturalist  and  explorer;  second, 
also  for  the  love  of  it,  that  of  teacher;  and  third, 
from  a  sense  of  duty,  that  of  minor  prophet  of 
Democracy.  If  he  had  his  days  to  live  over,  he 
would  again  choose  all  of  the  three. 

The  friendly  reader  will  not  fail  to  note  that  the 
record  is  essentially  objective  —  simply  the  story 
of  what  one  man  did  and  saw  in  the  world  about 
him,  being  always  eager  to  know  the  Cosmos  as  it 
is,  and  never  unduly  distressed  at  his  inability  to 
"remold  it  nearer  to  the  heart's  desire." 

The  same  critic  —  should  he  read  far  —  will  also 
observe  that  the  author  rarely  mentions  any  one 
of  whom  he  must  speak  disparagingly,  or  ventures 
to  judge  harshly  those  errors  in  judgment  or  failures 
in  will  from  which  no  one  in  public  or  private  life 
was  ever  exempt. 

As  stated  in  the  text,  this  work  is  essentially  a 
record  of  friendships;  but  even  as  thus  considered  it 
is  far  from  complete.  For  in  the  author's  varied  ex- 
perience as  teacher  and  as  executive,  he  depended  on 
the  willing  cooperation  of  his  associates  —  aid  granted 
in  an  unusual  degree.  To  every  one  who  has  shown 
him  sympathy  and  tolerance  he  is  very  grateful. 

In  the  actual  working  out  of  remembrances  he 
has  received  help  from  many  sources,  most  of  all 
from  his  wife,  who  has  wrestled  with  every  para- 
graph, both  in  manuscript  and  proof.  To  Charles 


v 


Foreword 


H.  Gilbert  and  Barton  W.  Evermann  he  is  especially 
indebted  for  jogging  his  recollection  as  to  details  in 
which  they  were  concerned.  As  Agassiz  often  said, 
"Memory  must  not  be  kept  too  full  or  it  will  spill 
over."  He  is  further  under  obligation  to  Professors 
M.  Anesaki  of  the  Imperial  University  of  Tokyo  and 
K.  Kara  of  the  Imperial  University  of  Kyoto,  who 
gave  a  critical  reading  to  Chapters  xxvi  and 
xxvii.  Finally,  for  any  errors  in  fact  or  interpre- 
tation which  may  have  slipped  through  anywhere, 
he  craves  indulgence. 

DAVID   STARR   JORDAN 
March,  1921 


C  viii  3 


CONTENTS 

BOOK  ONE   (1851-1879) 

PAGE 

CHAPTER  ONE i 

1.  Puritan       ancestry  —  John       Jordan  —  Rufus 
Jordan  —  Hiram     Jordan  —  Huldah      Hawley 
Jordan  —  John  Elderkin  Waldo 

2.  "Going  West"  —  The  Jordan  farm  —  A  glacial 
pond  —  Cranberry  pond  —  Rufus  Bacon  Jordan 

—  "The     Human     Harvest"  —  Mary    Jordan 
Edwards 

3.  Birthplace  —  East  Coy  Creek  —  Gainesville  — 
Early  recollections  —  Quilting  bees  —  The  old 
clock  —  Playing   soldier  —  A   long   drive  —  No 
whipping  —  To  Rochester  —  A  tragedy  of  pride 

—  Overpowering  fear  —  Timidity  and  mystery 

CHAPTER  Two 19 

1.  Learning  to  study  —  "Speaking  pieces"  —  The 
Red  Eric  —  "False  color  sense"  —  Tendency  in- 
herited —  Mapping    the    stars  —  Mapping    the 
world  —  Other  reverberations  —  Eric's  shells  — 
Barbara's  birds 

2.  Turning  to  Botany  —  Flowers  of  spring  —  In- 
terest in  flowers  and  trees  —  Portage  and   Sil- 
ver Lake —  Difference  in  floras  —  Painting  the 
flowers —  No  songbird 

3.  Dickens  —  Thackeray  —  Bret  Harte  —  Macau- 
lay  and  the  poets  —  The   Atlantic   Monthly  — 
Introduction     to     politics  —  Abolition     versus 
Union  —  Greeley   and   the    Tribune  —  Harper's 
Ferry  and  Sumter  —  Emancipation  —  The  call 
for  men  —  War  poets  —  Death  of  Lincoln 

4.  Castile    Academy  —  The    Female    Seminary  — 
The  study  of  French  —  John  Lord  Jenkins  — 
Gainesville      Zouaves  —  Learning      chess  —  A 
broken  nose  —  In  South  Warsaw  —  Coasting 

n  ix  a 


Contents 


PAGE 

5.  Home   advantages  —  Chief  drawbacks  —  Farm 
work  —  Love  of  sheep  —  Hoofrot  in   sheep  — 
Caustic  remedies  —  Peddling  sheep  —  Clearing 
swamps  —  Boiling  sap  —  Apple  culture  —  Far- 
sighted  eyes  —  Memory  —  Eager  but  patient 

6.  Religion  —  Personal    morals  —  Counts    against 
tobacco  —  Attitude  toward  alcohol  —  Cards  — 
"A  prayer  gauge"  —  Religion  and  hysteria  — 
Camp  meetings 

CHAPTER  THREE  ..............  .  ....................       51 

1.  Winning  a  Cornell  scholarship  —  Paying  one's 
way—  "The  Grove"  and  "the  Strug"  —  Ros- 
well  Leavitt  —  The  "Soiree  litter  air  e"  —  "The 
young    Heroy"  —  A  poet-botanist  —  Copeland 

2.  "Brothers   in    Delta   U"  —  The    Com  stocks  — 
Branner  and  the  others  —  Anderson  and  Brayton 

3.  College     fraternities  —  Studenten-Corps  —  Phi 
Beta  Kappa  —  -  Sigma  Xi  —  Special  features  — 
The  Chapter  House  —  Downward  tendencies  — 
Fraternity  standards  —  Wasted  energy 

4.  The  mock  program  —  Wholesome  discipline  — 
A  student  prank  —  E.  L.  R.  Moses  —  A  political 
sphinx  —  Three    women       pioneers  —  Lack    of 
social   amenities  —  The  Mitchell   sisters  —  Era 
poetasters  —  The  Minnie-song 

5.  A  birthday  party  on  April  i  —  Music  a  closed 
book  —  Favorite    poets  —  "Lyrics   of  Life"  — 
The  critic   relents  —  The   "Boston   Hymn"  — 
Bret     Harte  —  Thoreau  —  Andersen's    tales  — 
Beauties  of  nature 


6.    Prize    in    Entomology  —  Prize    in    History  — 
Custom  abandoned 


CHAPTER  FOUR 


1.  Andrew  D.  White  as  university  president  —  Ezra 
Cornell  --The     Morrill     Act  —  Mr.     Cornell's 
devotion 

2.  Pioneer   enthusiasm  —  Student    employment  — 


Content. 


PAGE 

Democracy  of  the  intellect  —  Things  of  the  spirit 

—  Cooperation     in     education  —  Coeducation 

—  Liberalism  at  Cornell 

3.  Meaning  of  Alma  Mater  —  Looking  forward  — 
Cornell  and  Berlin  —  Autocracy  in  the  German 
university  —  Sectarian    -colleges  —  The   elective 
system  —  Scholars  self-made  —  Repudiation  of 
prescribed  courses 

4.  George  William  Curtis  —  James  Russell  Lowell 

—  Taylor    and    Hughes  —  White's    lectures  — 
Goldwin  Smith  —  George  W.   Greene  —  Hartt 

—  Survey      of      Brazil  —  Derby  —  Wilder  — 
Schaeffer  —  Crane  —  Prentiss  —  General  courses 

—  Sprague  —  Master  of  Science  —  Graduation 

—  Doctor  of  Laws  —  Alumnus  trustee  —  Handi- 
cap of  the  Law  School 

CHAPTER  FIVE 100 

1.  Choice  of  a  calling  —  Interest  in  Botany  —  Pro- 
fessorship  at  Lombard  —  The  unbroken  prairie 

—  The  A.  A.  A.  S.  at  Dubuque  —  Guests  of  the 
state  —  Making  of  a  Darwin  —  Need  of  "  Darwin 
stuff"  —  In    Galesburg  —  Range    of    Natural 
Science  —  A  "fossil  ham"  —  The  Glacial  Epoch 

—  Leaving  Lombard 

2.  The  first  summer  school  of  science  —  Penikese  — 
Choice  of  students  —  First  sight  of  Agassiz  — 
Ideas,  not  names  —  The  lecture  room  —  Agassiz's 
purpose  —  The    thoughts    of    God  —  "Giving 
Agassiz  a  lesson "  —  First  dredging  trip 

3.  Agassiz  the  optimist  —  Not  a  Darwinian  —  My 
acceptance  of  Darwinism  —  Future  leaders  in 
science  —  Successful       teachers  —  Death       of 
Agassiz  —  Memorial  service  —  Anderson  School 
closed  —  Influence  of  Penikese 

4.  Algae  and  fishes  —  A  call  to  Wisconsin  —  Stu- 
dents at  Appleton  —  A  new  friend  —  Turning  to 
fishes  —  "Story  of  a   Stone"  —  The   sequel  — 
Agassiz      honored      at      Stanford  —  Appleton 
revisited 

C  *i  3 


Contents 


PAGE 

5.    Woods  Hole  and  Noank  —  George  Brown  Goode 

—  Goode  the   naturalist  —  Goode  the   man  — 
Verrill  and  Hyatt  —  Mystic  River 

CHAPTER  Six  129 

1.  Indianapolis  —  Indianapolis     High      School  — 
Enter      Gilbert  —  Maywood      warblers  —  The 
Manual   of  Vertebrates  — '  Marriage   to    Susan 
Bowen 

2.  McCulloch  —  Pauperism  —  Reed  —  Harrison  — 
The  McKinley  tariff—  Dr.  Fletcher  —  Riley  — 
Thompson  —  Two  friends  at  large 

3.  At  Cumberland  Gap  —  Shaler  —  The  mountain 
camp  —  Butler    University  —  Joint     studies  — 
Sisco  of  Lake  Tippecanoe  —  The  Johnny  Darters 

—  Rafinesque  —  Rafinesque     in     Kentucky  — 
Catalogue  of  fresh-water  fishes 

4.  Copeland's  death  —  Indiana  Medical  College  — 
Doctor  of  Medicine  —  Wiley  —  Not  a  clerical 

—  Concerning     medicine  —  Great     discoveries 

—  Floating  matter  in  the  air 

5.  Efforts  for  a  university  position  —  Wisconsin  — 
Princeton  —  Vassar  —  Michigan  —  Cincinnati  — 
Imperial  University  of  Tokyo  —  Handicaps 

CHAPTER  SEVEN 154 

1.  Harlan  and  McCreary  —  Lookout  Mountain  and 
Missionary  Ridge  —  White  and  black  —  Ocmul- 
gee     Basin  —  Stone     Mountain  —  Hayes     and 
Tilden  —  Greeley's  defeat 

2.  Invention  of  the  telephone  —  Speaking  across 
the    continent  —  Printing    a    letter  —  Explora- 
tion   of   Southern    rivers  —  About  Asheville  — 
Buncombe    County  —  Mitchell's     Peak  —  The 
Santee      Basin  —  Stephens  —  Rome      again  — 
Trout  of  the  Northwest 

3.  Second     trip     South  —  A     tragic     situation  — 
Change  in  angle  of  vision  —  The  Rhododendron 
Trail  —  Smash  Wagon  Ford  —  Falls  of  Tallulah 

C  xii  3 


Contents 


PAGE 

—  Natural     History    talks  —  Native    songs  — 
Patting  songs  —  Typical  negro  melodies  — Re- 
ligious      refrains  —  Beaufort  —  The       Dismal 
Swamp  and  Lake  Drummond  —  Brooks 

4.  The  "Baird  School"  —  Theodore  Gill  —  Mas- 
ter of  Taxonomy  —  Coues  —  Coues*  dread  of 
visitors  —  His  good  advice  —  Jordan  and 
Gilbert  —  Dall  and  others  —  Edward  Drinker 
Cope  —  Fishes  of  Ohio  again  —  Joseph  Henry 

BOOK  TWO   (1879-1891) 
CHAPTER  EIGHT 183 

1.  Dissension   at   Butler  —  A   dangerous   move  — 
Back  into  line  —  European  trips 

2.  A  sudden  transfer  —  Successor  to  Richard  Owen 

—  Indiana  University  —  Humbug  or  godlessness 

—  Grand  Old  Men  of  Indiana 

3.  Abolition  of  competition  —  Robert  Owen   and 
Maclure  —  Say  —  Lesueur  —  The  Owen  Broth- 
ers —  Neef  —  Troost  —  Too     many    drones  — 
Rapp  and  the  Angel  Stone 

4.  New  neighbors  —  The  Bates  School  of  Philos- 
ophy —  The  town  —  Only  one  at  a  time  —  An 
unpopular  book  —  Early-day  students  —  "The 
Hoosier  Schoolmaster" 

5.  Geodes  —  Trailing  Arbutus  —  Boisen  —  Brown 
County 

CHAPTER  NINE 201 

1.  Government    service    on    Pacific    Coast  —  De- 
tails    of     investigation  —  Los     Angeles  — -The 
Palos      Verdes  —  San      Diego  —  The      "Last 
Chance"  — "Mr.    Law"  —  Big    game    fishing 
around  Santa  Catalina 

2.  Santa      Barbara  —  Sudis  —  Flying      Fishes  — 
Method  of  flight  —  Opening  Indian  mounds  — 
San  Luis  Obispo  —  The  Black  Current  —  Millie- 
Christine  —  Monterey  —  The     Hagfish  —  Mis- 
sion   San    Carlos  —  Carrying   the   faith  —  An- 
il xiii  ] 


Contents 


PAGE 

cient    cypresses    and    Monterey    pines  —  The 
Seventeen-mile  Drive  —  La  Purita  de  los  Lobos 

—  A   seaside   retreat  —  Carmel   Bay 

3.  The   Occidental    Hotel    and    Major    Hooper  — 
Stevenson  —  Muir  —  Bryce  —  "Joe"  Le  Conte 

—  Academy    of    Sciences  —  "James    King    of 
William  "  —  Professional       mediums  —  "Odic 
force  "  —  "  Chinatown  "  —  A    Chinese    code  — 
Uncle  Sam's  incantation  ineffective  —  Chinook 
salmon  —  Puget  Sound  —  Tacoma  and   Seattle 

—  An    infant    university  —  At    Neah     Bay  — 
Siwash   incantation  —  Victoria  —  A  potlatch 

4.  The  five  salmon  —  Spawning  habits  —  Age  of 
salmon  —  The  Eulachon  —  Shad,  striped  bass, 
catfish,     and    carp  —  Tropical    explorations  — 
The  Panama  Canal 

5.  Tahoe      trout  —  A      Mormon      friend  —  Lake 
Bonneville  —  A  great  sucker  pond  —  The  "Mor- 
mon menace"  —  Value  of  patience 

CHAPTER  TEN 23  5 

1.  Building  up  a  laboratory  —  Varying  degrees  — 
Patchwork  courses  —  Value  of  Greek  —  Thor- 
oughness essential  —  Elective  system  in  its  in- 
fancy —  Conspicuous    undergraduate    students 

—  Graduate    students  —  Not    all    zoologists  — 
Amos     Butler — Sorting    the    fishes  —  "Story 
of  a  Salmon" 

2.  Along  the  Gulf  —  A  dollar  a   day  —  In   New 
Orleans  —  Broken    levees  —  Varied    fauna  —  A 
little  experiment  —  In  utter  darkness  —  Rescue 
~  University  of  Illinois  —  A  weighty  work 

3.  The    senior    tramp  —  Mountain    folk  —  "Red- 
mond, the  Outlaw"  —  Stiles's  researches  —  In- 
digent  strains  —  Valley   folk  —  Stentor   of  the 
Yosemite 

CHAPTER  ELEVEN 250 

i.   Tramps  abroad  —  Swiss  mountain  passes  —  In 
Italy 

C  xiv  ] 


Contents 


PAGE 

2.  At  Nordhjemsund  —  "Grod  og  Flode"  days  — 
A    sturdy    race  —  In    Skjaeggedal  —  Wreck   of 
Norway's  waterfalls  —  The  octroi  at  Issoire  — 
A  satire  in  economics  —  Prophecy  fulfilled 

3.  A   huge  pyramid  —  Gilbert's  dare  —  John  the 
Baptist  —  Starting   out  —  The    Bergschrund  — 
Dangling  ropes  —  The  greatest  Alpine  tragedy 

—  L'echelle  Jordan  —  On  the  crest  —  A  frightful 
accident  —  Victor    rescues     Gilbert  —  A     man 
strong  and   brave  —  Showers   of  stones  —  The 
refuge    hut  —  A    frosty    couch  —  A    majestic 
outlook  —  Another  compliment  —  Good  Samar- 
itans —  A    letter    from   John    the    Baptist  — 
First  ascents  of  the  Matterhorn  —  Modern  aids 

4.  Fishes  again  —  Giinther  —  Critic  and  friend  — 
International     Fisheries     Congress  —  A     walk 
across    Kent  —  Parslow   on    Darwin  —  A   good 
master  —  Not  without   honor  —  Leon  Vaillant 

—  lie  Adam  —  Bernhardt  —  European   labora- 
tories —  Treitschke  —  Kultur  —  Oceanography 

CHAPTER  TWELVE 279 

1.  Destruction  of  Owen  Hall  —  Gathering  a  new 
library  —  On  the  Fish  Hawk  — The  new  campus 

—  Marooned  —  Key  West  —  Mangrove  jungles 

—  A     rattler     overboard  —  Bad     neighbors  — 
King    Snake    and    Coral    Snake  —  The    Gila 
Monster 

2.  In  Havana  —  A  Cuban  naturalist  —  Amigo  de 
Don  Felipe  —  Fishes  of  Cuba  —  Cruelty  to  ani- 
mals —  Fish  fauna  of  American  river  basins  — 
Our  work  on  fishes  —  In  the  Southwest 

3.  An    undesired    responsibility  —  Installation    as 
president  —  University's  need  of  money  —  The 
member    from    Floyd  —  Loyal    alumni  —  The 
member   from   Dearborn  —  The   member  from 
Sullivan  —  Sweeping     changes  —  The     "major 
professor"  system  —  A  new  stimulus  —  Prom- 
ising   graduates    to    the    faculty  —  Search    for 
future  leaders  —  Nansen 

C  xv  3 


Contents 


PAGE 

4.  Old-school  presidents  —  Bionomics  —  Foibles 
of  university  heads  —  Value  of  higher  educa- 
tion —  Making  friends  —  Growth  of  Indiana 
University  —  A  wise  board  of  trustees  —  Alumni 
trustees  —  Death  of  Susan  Bowen  Jordan 

CHAPTER  THIRTEEN 303 

1.  Alfred     Russel     Wallace — :  Henry     George  — 
Wendell    Phillips  —  Beecher  —  Western    hospi- 
tality —  Roosevelt   and    reform  —  Rooseveltian 
epithets  —  A     joyous     nature  —  Roosevelt     as 
naturalist  —  Love    of    birds  —  Rooseveltia   brig- 
hami  —  Deep-sea  explorations  —  Anent  the  An- 
anias   Club  —  Civil    Service    in    Alaska  —  The 
tennis  cabinet  —  "His  Favorite  Author"  —  At 
his  best  —  Roosevelt's  strength   and  weakness 

2.  The  prey  of  spoilsmen  —  Foulke  —  Slain  for  the 
Republic  —  Merit,  not  politics  —  Civil  Service 
in  Yellowstone  Park  —  At  the  White  House  — 
McKinley's  method  —  Funston's   promotion  — 
The  Mugwumps  —  Partisan  tricks 

CHAPTER  FOURTEEN 319 

1.  A    call    to    Iowa — President    McBride  —  The 
Jardin  des    Plantes  —  In    the    mountains  —  A 
noted     guide  —  "John     Brown's     body" — A 
second    visit   to    Pensacola 

2.  Evolution  of  the  college  curriculum  —  The  dregs 
of   learning  —  A    radical    suggestion  —  Disper- 
sion of  river  fishes  —  Marriage  to  Jessie  Knight 

—  A   Huguenot   Puritan  —  Admiral   Knight  — 
Willoughby  Lake  —  Quebec  —  Sainte  Anne  de 
Beau-Pre  —  Luray  —  Jordan's       Law  —  Gemi- 
nate  Species  —  Collecting   in    Virginia  —  Joint 
studies  of  classic  fish  and  fish  names  —  A  village 
lost 

3.  In   Colorado  —  A   splendid   find  —  Twin   Lake 
Yellow    Fin  —  Uncompahgre  Pass  —  Lost    arts 

—  Utah   again 

Cxvi  3 


Contents 


PAGE 

4.  Government  investigation  in  the  Yellow- 
stone —  A  painted  chasm  —  "Story  of  a  Strange 
Land"  —  A  curious  foreshadowing  —  Barren 
streams  —  Lupine  Creek  —  Yellowstone  River 

—  Two    Ocean    Pass  —  Bringing    in    new    trout 

—  Problem    of    the     Golden    Trout  —  Species 
formed  in  isolation  —  Helping  nature  out 

CHAPTER  FIFTEEN 344 

1.  "Schaking"  on  the  Britannia  —  Fjord  and  fjeld 

—  The  Kaiser  at  Stallhjemskleven  —  Odde  and 
the   Skjaeggedal  —  On  foot  to   Stor   Ishaug  — 
Birch  gradation  —  A  moonlight  drive  —  House 
of   the    Thousand    Terrors  —  Linguistic    expe- 
riences —  The       Passion      Play  —  The      Alice 
Blanche  —  A     mountain     refuge  —  A     life    of 
devotion  —  Val  Tournanche  —  On  the  Matter- 
joch  —  Snowbound     in     August  —  A    dazzling 
world  —  An  amazing  disclosure 

2.  Function    of   the    State    University  —  White's 
telegram  —  Leland  Stanford  and  his  errand  — 
A  God  of  Love  —  Offer  accepted  —  First  visit 
to    Palo    Alto  —  Secretary     Elliott  —  Guiding 
principles   —  Plan  of  organization  of  the  new  uni- 
versity —  Coulter  —  Swain  —  Bryan  —  East  in 
search  of  professors  —  An   untried  field 

BOOK  THREE   (1891-1899) 
CHAPTER  SIXTEEN 365 

1.  Leland    Stanford    Junior — Plans    for    endow- 
ment —  Laying   the    corner    stone  —  Seeking 
expert  advice  —  An  offer  declined 

2.  The  tall  tree  —  The  University  estates  —  The 
fine   art   of  horse   breeding  —  Motions   of  the 
horse  —  The  kindergarten  —  Sale  of  the   stud 

3.  Encina  Hall  —  The  architects  of  Stanford  Uni- 
versity —  The      Quadrangles  —  The      Patio  — 
Color      contrasts  —  The      Arboretum  —  Palm 
Avenue 

C  xvii  3 


Contents 


PAGE 

4.  A  California  Trianon  —  Peter  Coutts  —  Adorn- 
ing  nature  —  Disappearance   of  the   "French- 
man" —  Alcoholic      fauna  —  Ordered      out  — 
Pioneering  —  A    prohibition    town  —  City    fa- 
thers—  Saving  the  live  oaks  —  "Uncle  John" 

5.  Naming  the  streets  —  Don  Gaspar  de  Portola 

—  Provision  for  women  —  The  Museum  —  In- 
stalling the  general  collections  —  Family  treas- 
ures —  The  boy  Leland 

6.  Our  new  environment  —  Sierra  de  la  Santa  Cruz 

—  Sierra  del  Monte  Diablo  —  Monte  Diablo  — 
The  golden  poppy  —  Miles  and  miles  of  bloom 

—  The  Lick  Observatory  —  The  Coast  redwood 

—  A  noble  outlook 

CHAPTER  SEVENTEEN 394 

1.  Skepticism     and     apprehension  —  Advice     and 
warning  —  Changed  conditions 

2.  The  opening  day  —  A  true  Golden  Age  —  The 
first  faculty  of  Stanford  University  —  Turning 
to     younger     men  —  Stillman  —  The     Indiana 
group  —  Some  of  the  "Old  Guard"  —  Not  all  re- 
mained —  Non-resident     professors  —  Harrison 
on  International  Law 

3.  Adventurous       youth  —  Handling       Encina  — 
Dropped  off  the  edge  of  the  campus  —  No  smok- 
ing   in    the    Quadrangle  —  Sunday    services  — 
Our  padre 

4.  The  Daily  Palo  Alto  —  The  Sequoia  —  The  Cha- 
parral —  Early       characters  —  Thoburn  —  "  In 
Terms       of       Life"  —  Prayer  —  "Four-leaved 
Clover"  —  Hoover  —  "De      Re      Metallica"  — 
The  women  of  Stanford  —  Friends  and  disci- 
ples—  Wilbur  —  Not    forgotten  —  The    second 
generation 

5.  "Frosh"    and    "  Prof "  — Students    of   mature 
age  —  The  first  football  game  —  University  out- 
ings—  Senior-faculty    games  —  "Fanned    out" 

—  "A   Faculty   Meeting"  —  The    audience   re- 
assured —  Successful  vaudeville  —  A  contest  in 


xv 


Contents 


PAGE 

politeness  —  The    "Antigone"  —  Die  Luft  der 
Freiheit 

6.    Changes  in  policy  —  Limitation  of  numbers  of 
both  women  and  men  —  Entrance  requirements 

—  Large    liberty    of    election     in     preparation 

—  Radical  and  conservative  —  Why  Eastern  stu- 
dents  came  —  Educational   ideals  —  Charm    of 
California  —  Students    as    helpers  —  Fraternity 
chapter  houses 

CHAPTER  EIGHTEEN 428 

1.  The  Yosemite  —  Sequoia  washingtonia  —  Other 
giant  conifers  —  How  to  tell  fir  from  spruce  — 
Cheerful   tales   of  the    Sierra  —  Yosemite    and 
Lauterbrunnen  —  Nevada  Fall  and  Rheinfall 

2.  Floodmore  —  Joyous    excursions  —  Californiacs 

—  "She  first  loved  us"  —  Two  seasons  in  Cali- 
fornia —  The  Missions  —  San  Diego  —  San  Luis 
Rey  —  San  Juan   Capistrano  —  Santa   Barbara 

—  San  Antonio  —  San  Juan  Bautista  and  Santa 
Clara  —  Dolores  —  The  Pious  Fund 

3.  A  Chaucer  scholar  —  Other  strong  men  —  Smith 
as  poet  —  Wing  at  home  and  abroad  —  Mary 
Sheldon    Barnes  —  Kellogg  —  A    varied    career 

—  Charlotte    Kellogg  —  George    Clark  —  Fair- 
clough's  war  service  —  Tried   and  true 

CHAPTER  NINETEEN 447 

1.  California's    first    automobile  —  University    ex- 
tension —  Luther    Burbank  —  Tribute    by    De 
Vries  —  A    reverent   evolutionist  —  Moses    and 
Howison  —  Pragmatism  —  Ritter  —  Phoebe 
Hearst  —  Susan  Lincoln  Mills  —  An  auspicious 
combination 

2.  The  singer  of  the  Sierras  —  Coolbrith,  Cheney, 
and  Markham  — "The  Man  with  the  Hoe"  — 
The  splendid,  idle  forties  —  The  Land  of  Sun- 
shine group  —  The  dean  of  anglers  —  Good  cit- 
izens   too  —  Muir    and    Keith  —  Jack    London 

—  Frank  Norris 

C  xix  ] 


Contents 


PAGE 

3.  Ambrose    Bierce  —  His    awful    humor  —  Fitch 
and   Millard  —  A   great  occasion   lost  —  Liter- 
ary  journalists  —  A   grim   old    fighter 

4.  Stebbins,  Wendte,  and  Brown  —  Voorsanger  — 
Other  friendly  neighbors  —  Olney  —  The  Cooper 
staff — Stallard 

5.  Sutro  —  Valentine  and  Mills  —  A  strong  woman 

—  General  Lowe  —  The  Mission  Inn  —  A  Sac- 
ramento trio  —  The  Bidwells  —  A  monumental 
romancer  —  The  Baron  of  Arizona 

6.  Welcome    guests  —  An    interesting    career  —  A 
Bismarckian  critic  —  Lapses  from  German  grace 

—  "Primitive"       Americans  —  Our       greatest 
preacher 

CHAPTER  TWENTY 478 

1.  Death  of  the  founder  —  Southern  Pacific  owners 

—  An    unforeseen    dilemma  —  In  the    Probate 
Court  —  Leland  Stanford's  funeral 

2.  His  early  life  —  General  merchant  —  War  gov- 
ernor —  Railway    builder  —  The    last    spike  — 
United  States  Senator  —  Kindness  of  heart  — 
Religious    attitude  —  Freedom    from    entangle- 
ments of  church  or  party  —  Training  for  useful- 
ness in  life  —  Value  of  cooperation  —  Waste  of 
labor  —  To  dignify  labor  —  An  open  road  to  edu- 
cation —  Need    of   competent    teachers  —  Suc- 
cess not  measured  by  numbers  —  Equal  educa- 
tion  for  women  —  Increase  of  individual   effi- 
ciency —  Value  of  time  —  Farm  loan  project 

3.  Defect   in   enabling   act  —  Welton   Stanford  — 
The    panic    of    1893  —  Professors    as    personal 
servants  —  The  bag  of  gold  —  A  monthly  al- 
lowance —  Contribution     by     professors  —  The 
crisis  at  Vina  —  The  " freezing  out"  process  — 
Pioneer  reception  —  Stanch  supporters 

4.  A  staggering  blow  —  Government  aid  to  Cen- 
tral Pacific  —  Two  valuations  —  No  help  from 
partners  —  "Stopping  the  circus"  —  Favorable 


Contents 


PAGE 

decisions  —  Appeal  to  Supreme  Court  —  Cleve- 
land's intervention  —  Harlan's  decision 
5.   Obstacle  of  debt  —  Mrs.  Stanford's  anxiety  — 
Putting  Stanford  into  the  California  Constitu- 
tion —  A  valuable   burden  —  The  Jewel  Fund 

—  Efforts  to  legalize  a  last  will  and  testament  — 
.    A  cold  opinion  —  Forlorn  hope  —  Rigid  econ- 
omies —  Blanket  deeds  —  Unflinching  devotion 

—  A  sacred  trust 

CHAPTER  TWENTY-ONE 511 

1.  Need  of  a  new  residence  —  The  "woodpecker 
tree"  —  The  orchard — Our  friends  the  quails 

—  Other    feathered     tenants  —  Some    monkey 
folk  —  Maternal  yearnings  —  A  simian  Mazeppa 

—  Loro  Bonito  —  A  difficult  accomplishment  — 
Coloratura  duets  —  Furry  invaders 

2.  Save  the  Redwoods  —  The  Big  Basin  statute 

—  California   Redwood    Park  —  The   Pinnacles 
Reserve  —  Lake     Tahoe  —  Desolation     Valley 
and    Heather   Lake  —  The   Tahoe   dyke  —  Up 
and  over  Rockbound  —  Circuit  of  Lake  Tahoe 

—  The  Bret  Harte  country  —  Plumas  County 

—  Lassen's  Butte 

3.  An  inclusive  memoir  on  American  fishes  —  Good 
helpers  —  University   extension  —  "The   Physi- 
cal Basis  of  Heredity"  —  Collecting  at  Mazatlan 

—  New     friends  —  A     nightmare  —  Love    and 
science  —  Ygnacio  —  Our  gringo  Colorado  —  A 
paradise    of    birds  —  Good     talkers  —  Hidden 
treasure  —  Ygnacio's  escopete 

4.  The  Pioneers  graduate  —  The  Yellowstone  again 

—  Mountain  chipmunks  —  The  Devil's  Wood- 
pile —  A  national  university  —  Hoyt's  efforts  — 
Opportunities  for  research  —  Influential   advo- 
cates —  Argument    before    the    Senate  —  Real 
scholars  not  partisan  —  Discussions  pro  and  con 

—  Faction  in  science  —  Election  as  president  — 
After  the  great  fire  —  Natural  History  groups 

C  xxi  3 


Contents 


PAGE 

—  Active  and  honorary  memberships  —  Loro 
Bonito  now  learns  the  Stanford  "yell"  — 
Mrs.  Stanford's  gratitude  —  Herbert  C.  Nash 


CHAPTER  TWENTY-TWO 545 

1.  Fur   Seal  problem  —  Elaine's   mare  clausum  — 
Breeding  homes  —  Roving  habits  —  Disastrous 
effect   of  pelagic   sealing  —  Contention   of  the 
Unites  States  —  Paris  Award 

2.  Early  records  —  First  estimate  as  to  numbers  — 
Land   killing    of    males  —  My    associates  —  A 
capable     group  —  The     British   commission  — 
Through     Alexander     Archipelago  —  A     great 
achievement  —  Removal  to  Annette   Island  — 
New        allegiance  —  Sitka  —  Glaciers  and  vol- 
canoes —  Unalaska  —  Dolly   Vardens    big    and 
small  —  Arctic  flora  —  St.  George 

3.  St.  Paul— -The  Aleuts  — The  "Roblar  Man" 

—  Puzzled    experts  —  Apollon's    big   halibut  — 
To  Zapadni   and   back  —  A  tale  of  the   Mist 
Islands  —  Deep-sea  fishes  —  The  first  Bogoslof 

—  The  last 

4.  Life  on  the  Pribilofs  —  The  white  seal  —  Count- 
ing harems  —  The  old  fellows  leave  —  The  little 
Blue  Fox  —  Fox  walks  —  An  odd  countenance 
Cruel  eyes  —  Marie  Corelli  and  the  Gray  Sea 
Lion  —  The  Hair  Seal 

5.  "Through  storm  and  fog,  by  luck  or  log,  We  sail 
as  Bering  sailed"  —  Greater  Britain  —  A  tempt- 
ing offer  —  Stories  told  to  children  —  Youthful 
critics  —  "The  Care  and  Culture  of  Men"  — 
"The    Innumerable    Company"  —  Foster    and 
Hamlin  —  To    end    pelagic    sealing  —  Richard 
Olney  —  Li  Hung  Chang 

6.  McKinley's        Cabinet  —  John        Sherman  — 
McKinley   and    Sherman  —  John    Hay  —  Mar- 
rack's  speech  —  "Lessons  of  the  Tragedy"  — 
We  make  the  laws 

C  xxii  3 


Contents 


PAGE 

CHAPTER  TWENTY-THREE 577 

1.  To  Bering  Sea  once  more  —  Klondike  gold  — 
Muir  Glacier — Cleveland's  idiosyncrasy — Bowers 

—  "Steve"  Elkins — Moser  to  the  rescue  — 
An  agreeable  change  —  War  at  Karluk  —  Bel- 
kofski  —  The  Sea  Otter  —  Much  gold  but  no 
food  —  A  Treasury  order  —  Costly  disregard 
of  national  resources 

2.  Fair    weather  —  A    new    factor  —  Attacks    of 
Uncinaria      lucasi  —  Complete      eradication  — 
Branding  —  Fencing  a  failure  —  The  Fur  Seal's 
stupidity  —  His  teachable  cousin  —  Short  mem- 
ories —  On  the  Satellite  —  British  discipline  — 
The  gay  homes  of  Nikolski  —  Luscious  dishes 

—  Bering's   death    on   Tolstoi   Mys  —  Steller's 
fate 

3.  Medni      precedents  —  Picturesque      Glinka  — 
Moser  confers   a   boon  —  Poetic  inspiration  — 
Sending  for  the  mail  —  Hooper's  tact  and  wis- 
dom —  A  master  seaman  —  Fog  as  a  blanket  to 
sound  —  Trying  to  be  funny  —  The  Roble'  cat 

—  Fatal    detail  —  A    frantic    editor — "Scios- 
ophy"  — A  profitable  hoax  —  Fur  Seals  extinct 
on  Guadalupe  Island 

4.  The  diplomatic  commission  —  British  reluc- 
tance —  Our  predicament  —  A  way  out  —  Fresh 
complications  —  Vostochni  invaded  —  Sir  Wil- 
frid Laurier  —  Kakichi  Mitsukuri  and  his  strange 
offering  —  Foster  calls  on  me  for  a  speech 
5.  Fur  Seal  report  —  Treaty  of  1911 — Credit 
where  credit  is  due  —  Efforts  to  neutralize  the 
treaty  —  Menace  of  unchecked  pelagic  sealing 

—  Unsound  reasoning  —  Killing  of  superfluous 
males  a  necessity  —  Value  of  expert  knowledge 

—  Continuous  observation 

CHAPTER  TWENTY-FOUR 613 

I.   Atrocities  in  Cuba  —  A  special  envoy  —  Sink- 
of  the  Maine  —  McKinley's  advisers  —  Wood- 

C  xxiii  ] 


Contents 


PAGE 

ford  unfairly  discredited  —  Dewey  at  Manila  — 
"Lest  we  forget!"  —  Anti-imperialism  —  See 
Mark  Twain:  "To  a  Person  Sitting  in  Dark- 
ness"—  Democracy  turned  imperialist  —  Eu- 
genic studies  —  Darwin  on  war  selection  —  "The 
Blood  of  the  Nation"  —  "The  Human  Harvest" 
—-"War  and  the  Breed"  — Mrs.  Stanford  and 
world  peace 

2.  To  the  Southwest  —  Lummis  and  The  Land  of 
Sunshine  —  Cliff-dwellings  —  Bound     for    the 
Grand  Canyon  —  Primeval  place  —  Erosion  two 
miles  deep  —  A  tough  job  —  Earth  sculpture  — 
Hairbreadth    escapes    of    John    Hance  —  The 
wrathful  chub 

3.  On  to  Acorn  a  —  Pueblo  towns   and   people  — 
Communal  defense  —  The  Acoma  mesa  —  Coro- 
nado  visits  Acoma  —  Revolt    and    massacre  — 
Wise    concessions  —  The    house    a    fortress  — 
Acoma      trails  —  Pottery  —  Fine      courtesy  — 
Camera  magic  —  Dizzy  ways  —  Supplicating  the 
gods  —  A     gallo     race  —  The     white     man's 
incantation 

4.  Enchanted    Katzimo  —  Legend   of  Katzimo  — 
"Disenchanting"  the  mesa  —  Hodge's  expedi- 
tion —  Evidences    of    habitation  —  A     furious 
ride  —  Precarious    hold  —  Trophies    from    the 
top  —  Safely  down  —  The   prairie   dog  —  Bur- 
rowing    owl  —  An     astonished     rattlesnake  — 
Strange  customs  —  Home-loving  aborigines 

CHAPTER  TWENTY-FIVE 638 

I.  A  long  holiday  —  Siestas  alternating  with  fiestas 
—  The  adored  Presidente  —  View  from  Chapul- 
tepec  —  An  exquisite  outlook  —  "Los  Toros" 
at  Guadalajara  —  Abundant  hospitality  — 
Great  estates  seized  by  the  people  —  Striking 
contrasts  —  Mount  Orizaba  —  Exotic  lands  — 
Alpine  heights  —  A  problem  in  Ichthyology  — 
The  coralillo  —  Diaz  the  man  —  La  planta 
animal  —  My  mother's  death 

C  xxiv  ] 


Contents 


PAGE 

2.  The    Hall    of    Fame  —  Odd     omissions  —  Civic 
Forum  Medal  —  Medal  of  Honor 

3.  Camping  in  Kings  River  Canyon — An  irrep- 
arable loss  —  Relics  of  antiquity  —  The  North 
Palisade  —  "Yosemites"  —  University  of  Cali- 
fornia Peak  —  Ouzel  Basin  —  Stanford  Univer- 
sity Peak  —  Breaking  waves  of  granite  —  Alps 
and  Sierras  contrasted 

4.  Oom    Paul's     obstinacy  —  Britain's    moral    re- 
sponsibility —  Imperial    expansion  —  The    Kai- 
ser's   telegram  —  A    gross    lapse  —  Why    free- 
dom   matters  —  Mob     and     herd     instincts  — 
Campbell-Bannerman  —  Smuts 

5.  Inauguration  of  Benjamin  Ide  Wheeler  —  "Eat- 
ing one's  way  through"  —  President   Barrows 

APPENDIXES: 

A.  Colonial  Genealogy 665 

B.  Inaugural  Address,  Stanford  University,  Octo- 

ber i,  1891 688 

C.  Extracts    from    Certain     Personal    Letters    of 

Mrs.  Jane  Lathrop  Stanford 691 

D.  From  "Lest  We  Forget". . 695 

E.  Appeal  of  the  Anti-Imperialist  League,  1899. . . .  699 

F.  How  Barbara  Came  to  Escondite 701 

G.  Brief  Mention  of  Certain  Graduates  of  Stanford 

University  between  1892  and  1899 707 


LIST  OF  ILLUSTRATIONS 

Huldah  Hawley  Jordan,  1876 Frontispiece 

OPPOSITE  PAGE 

Hiram  Jordan,  1886 6 

Mary  Jordan  Edwards,  1873;  Lucia  Jordan  Beadle,  1895; 

Rufus  Bacon  Jordan,  1860  14 

Barbara  Jordan,  1898 28 

David  Starr  Jordan,  August,  1868 .  44 

John  Henry  Comstock;  Anna  Botsford  Comstock;  Melville 

Best  Anderson;  William  Russel  Dudley 56 

John  Caspar  Branner,  1896 66 

Andrew  Dickson  White,  1868 78 

David  Starr  Jordan  at  Graduation,  1872 96 

Louis  Agassiz,  about  1857  no 

David  Starr  Jordan,  1874 124 

Susan  Bowen  Jordan,  1879;  David  Starr  Jordan,  1880  .  132 
Herbert  Edson  Copeland,  1876;  Charles  Henry  Gilbert, 

1880 14° 

The  "Angel  Stone,"  New  Harmony 194 

Ruined  Mission  of  San  Juan  Capistrano  204 

San  Carlos  Borromeo  in  Carmelo,  1880 212 

Point  Lobos 218 

Mount  Rainier  224 

Reunion  of  Class  of  1883,  Indiana  University,  June,  1920  248 

Rjukanfos,  Thelemark,  Norway 256 

Matterhorn  from  Near  Schwartzsee  (Lac  Noir)  ....  262 

Refuge  Hut,  1881 268 

Edith  Monica  Jordan,  1909;  Harold  Bowen  Jordan,  1906  300 

Jessie  Knight  Jordan,  1886  and  1898 326 

Knight  and  Eric,  1908 354 

Leland  Stanford,  Junior;  Jane  Lathrop  Stanford;  Leland 

Stanford 366 

Horses  on  the  Palo  Alto  Ranch 37° 

Inner  Court,  Stanford  University,  1891 374 

Outer  Quadrangle,  Stanford  University,  1903 38° 

Inner  Court  and  Memorial  Church,  1909;  Looking  through 

Triple  Arch,  Inner  Court,  into  Memorial  Court  ....  386 

xxvii  ] 


List  of  Illustrations 


OPPOSITE  PAGE 


Charles  David  Marx;  Ray  Lyman  Wilbur;  Edward  Curtis 

Franklin;  Douglas  Houghton  Campbell 398 

David  Starr  Jordan,  1891;  Wilbur  Wilson  Thoburn;  John 

Maxson  Stillman       i 406 

Herbert   Hoover;  Vernon   Kellogg 410 

Henry  Rushton  Fairclough;  Clelia  Duel  Mosher,  M.D.   .  414 

The  President  at  the  Bat,  1895      .    . 420 

Redwoods,  La  Honda;  Prune  Trees,  Santa  Clara  Valley  430 

San  Francisco  de  Assis  de  los  Dolores  in  Fiesta      ....  438 

"Rolling  Foothills  "on  the  "Old  Farm"     .    . 458 

Leland  Stanford,  about  1890      480 

Mr.  and  Mrs.  Leland  Stanford,  1850 494 

Francis  E.  Spencer;  Samuel  Franklin  Leib;  Timothy  Hop- 
kins       500 

The  Garden,  1898;  the  "Woodpecker  Tree" 512 

Barbara  Jordan,  1895 530 

Bering  Sea,  Showing  Position  of  Pribilof  and  Commander 

Islands;  St.  Paul  Island,  Pribilof  Islands,  Alaska  ...  548 
Joint  British-American  Commission  for  Fur-Seal  Investi- 
gation, Unalaska,   1896 .  552 

Sitka,  Alaska 556 

Fur  Seal  Rookery  on  Lukanin 560 

Second  Bogoslof  as  It  Rose  from  the  Sea,  1883      ....  564 

Muir  Glacier 57$ 

Fur  Seals  on  Old  Landslide,  Palata  . 592 

Joint  British-American  Diplomatic  Commission,  1897—98  602 

Gateway  to  Acorn  a;  On  the  Modern  Trail 626 

Partial  View  of  Acoma  Pueblo 632 

Lummis- Jordan  Party  on  Top  of  the  Enchanted  Mesa; 

Enchanted  Mesa  from  the  Southeast 636 

Puente  de  Ixtla,  Morelos,  Mexico 642 

North  Palisade  from  Summit  of  Mt.  Woodworth;  Kear- 

sarge  Pinnacles  and  Lakes  ,    ,    ,    , 650 


xxviii  ] 


BOOK   ONE 

1851-1879 


THE  DAYS  OF  A  MAN 

CHAPTER  ONE 


"!F  we  know  ourselves  well/'  says  Barrie,  "we 
know  our  parents  also."  Conversely  runs  the  old 
Shinto  maxim,  "Let  men  know  by  your  own  deeds 
who  were  your  ancestors."  Again,  according  to 
Erasmus  Darwin  more  than  a  century  ago,  each 
man  is  but  "an  elongation  of  his  parents'  life."  He 
is,  in  fact,  the  elongation  of  two  lives  —  and  (be- 
hind these)  of  thousands  of  others  more  or  less 
divergent,  else  he  could  have  no  individuality  or 
be  really  himself.  Such  originality  as  may  be  his 
comes  from  new  combination,  not  from  acquisition. 

When  a  child  is  once  born,  "the  gate  of  gifts  is 
closed";  nothing  more  comes  unsought.  He  may 
henceforth  expect  nothing  new,  but  must  devote 
himself  to  the  adjustment  and  development  of  his 
heritage  of  potentialities  received  through  father 
and  mother.  Each  one,  then,  is  a  "chip  of  the  old 
block,"  but  not  that  alone;  each  is  a  composite  of 
many  chips  of  many  blocks  —  a  fact  which  obligates 
me  to  say  something  about  my  ancestry.  This  was  Puritan 
made  up  of  common  men  —  farmers,  teachers,  ancestry 
preachers,  lawyers  —  and  their  womenfolk,  all  of 
the  old  Puritan  stock,  every  one  of  their  earlier 
forebears  (so  far  as  we  know)  having  migrated  hope- 
fully from  Devon  for  the  most  part,  or  in  some  cases 
from  London,  to  build  up  new  fortunes  in  the  free 

C  i  a 


1  y\  0  :l !  J  A  *0     The  Days  of  a  Man  £1809 

air  of  a  New  World.  Among  them  occur  the  names 
of  Waldo,  Adams,  Cary,  Hull,  Bacon,  Holly,  Fowler, 
Foster,  Graves,  Dimmock,  Wight,  Lake,  and  Drake,1 
the  line  last  named  harking  back  in  Devon  to  Drakes, 
Grenvilles,  Courteneys,  Prideaux,  Gilberts,  and  De 
Quincys. 

John  John  Jordan,  my  great-grandfather,  served  in  the 
Jordan  Revolution;  in  after  years  he  was  justice  of  the 
peace  at  Moriah  on  the  hills  above  Port  Henry  on 
Lake  Champlain  in  Essex  County,  New  York.  Be- 
hind him  and  his  father,  Elijah  Jordan,  a  Baptist 
clergyman  of  Litchfield,  Connecticut,  stood  Rufus 
Jordan,  supposed  to  be  a  certain  Rufus  known  to 
have  left  Jordan  in  Devon  to  seek  his  fortune  in 
America.  John  Jordan's  old  farm  was  a  barren  and 
stony  tract  Strewn  with,  crystals  of  red  hematite, 
the  common  iron  ore,  which  my  father  used  for  shot 
in  squirrel  hunting.  Half  a  century  later,  and  long 
after  my  grandfather,  another  Rufus  Jordan,  had 
sold  this  property,  it  acquired  large  value  as  one  of 
New  York's  great  sources  of  iron,  and  on  it  now 
stands  the  considerable  town  of  Mineville. 
Rufus  Rufus  Jordan  I  remember  as  a  dark  and  wiry  little 
man  wi^h  large  black  eyes,  and  an  intense  dislike  for 
the  political  group  which  he  called  "the  Feds."  His 
death  occurred  in  1862,  when  he  was  seventy-nine 
years  old.  Of  my  paternal  grandmother,  Rebecca 
Bacon,  I  recall  only  that  she  was  a  slender,  keen- 
eyed,  quick-spoken  old  lady  who  sat  by  the  winter  fire. 
My  father,  Hiram  Jordan,  was  born  on  February 
12,  1809,  which  date,  it  will  be  remembered,  was 
also  the  birthday  of  Darwin  and  of  Lincoln.  A  little 

1  See  Appendix  A  (page  665). 


1809]  My  Parents 


less  than  six  feet  in  height,  he  was  spare,  wiry,  and  Hiram 
very  athletic.  As  a  youth  he  used  to  be  able  to 
clasp  his  hands  and  jump  through  them,  a  feat  I 
also  was  once  able  to  perform,  but  which  I  have 
been  unable  to  compass  for  a  good  many  years  back. 
A  clever  hunter  in  his  earlier  years,  Father  possessed 
a  large  degree  of  woodcraft,  though  later  in  life  he 
refused  even  to  own  a  gun.  With  no  very  marked 
originality,  yet  quick  to  see  a  point  and  adopt  from 
others,  especially  from  my  mother,  he  was  a  keen 
observer,  a  man  of  great  energy,  and  of  considerable 
ability  as  a  speaker.  His  conception  of  duty  was 
firm  and  unflinching;  he  used  no  form  of  alcohol  or 
tobacco,  and  spent  a  large  part  of  the  latter  portion 
of  his  life  fighting  the  liquor  interests  in  his  county. 
Having  been  a  strong  Abolitionist  before  the  war, 
he  was  from  the  first  a  vigorous  supporter  of  Lincoln's 
policies.  Active  in  behalf  of  all  educational  move- 
ments, he  served  for  a  long  time  as  trustee  of  the 
public  school  of  his  district,  and  as  a  teacher  himself 
for  ten  or  twelve  years  was  locally  noted  for  skill  in 
instruction  and  maintenance  of  order.  By  religious 
belief  he  felt  in  harmony  with  Unitarians  and  Univer- 
salists  alike,  becoming  finally  a  pillar  of  the  local  Uni- 
versalist  church.  Although  of  a  cheerful  disposition, 
he  was  undemonstrative  and  often  silent  for  a  long 
time  if  his  feelings  had  been  hurt.  He  never  laughed 
aloud,  so  far  as  I  can  remember,  but  for  that  matter 
neither  have  I  except  in  an  elephantine  way  to  amuse 
the  children.  My  fun  I  always  take  internally. 

Huldah  Lake  Hawley,  my  mother,  was  born  in 
Whitehall,  Washington  County,  New  York,  July  9, 
1812.     A  woman  of  large  stature  and  strong,  re-  J°rdan 
ligious  character,   though  liberal  as  to  details  of 

n  3  3 


The  Days  of  a  Man  £1837 

faith,  she  had  a  distinctly  original  mind,  a  broad 
outlook  on  affairs,  considerable  native  literary  skill, 
and  (for  her  time)  a  good  English  education.  At 
writing  she  was  rather  clever.  Of  her  verses,  which 
he  copied  neatly  in  an  elaborately  ornate  hand,  my 
father  was  very  proud.1  Mother,  too,  had  been  a 
successful  teacher,  and  for  some  time  after  their 
marriage  my  parents  maintained  on  the  farm  a 
private  school  with  a  few  resident  pupils. 

Of  David  Hawley,  my  mother's  father,  a  man  of 
large  build  and  generous  mind,  with  a  personal 
influence  unusual  for  a  frontier  farmer,  I  had  little 
direct  knowledge,  as  for  some  years  before  his  death 
he  suffered  from  ill  health  which  confined  him  to 
the  house.  His  father  was  the  Reverend  Sylvanus 

1  One  of  my  mother's  poems,  still  preserved,  reads  as  follows: 
WHAT  is  OUR  HOPE? 

When  we  shall  sink  in  drooping  age, 
When  friends  depart,  when  sorrows  rage, 
And  earth's  frail  joys  all  fleeting  go, 
What  balm  remains  for  mortal  woe? 

Is  this  our  hope  that  we  shall  reign 
With  God,  our  Saviour,  free  from  pain, 
While  millions  of  his  children  dwell 
Mid  ceaseless  flames  in  endless  hell? 

Though  tender  offspring  there  we  see 
Wailing  in  hopeless  agony, 
Yet  we  with  heartfelt  pleasure  hear 
Their  groans  and  sighs,  nor  drop  a  tear? 

Ah  no,  we  hope  that  one  and  all 
Shall  rise  at  their  Creator's  call, 
From  sorrows,  sin,  and  death  made  free, 
And  all  in  Christ  new  creatures  be. 

This  precious  hope  can  give  us  peace 
When  all  our  earthly  comforts  cease 
And  make  us  with  our  dying  breath 
Shout,  Where's  thy  victory,  boasting  Death? 

HULDAH  JORDAN 
Gainesville,  N.  Y. 
January  22,  1837 


18303  Waldo  Ancestry 

Holly  of  Stratford,  Connecticut,  our  different  spelling 
of  the  surname  having  been  adopted  by  the  children 
of  Sylvanus'  first  wife,  Huldah  Lake,  of  which 
group  my  grandfather  was  one.  Huldah  Lake  Holly 
was  regarded  as  a  gifted  woman,  and  for  her -my 
mother  was  named.  Two  of  the  Holly  descendants 
of  the  last  century,  Alanson  and  Birdsall  Holly, 
became  distinguished  civil  engineers. 

My  mother's  mother,  Anne  Waldo,  a  third  or 
fourth  cousin  of  Ralph  Waldo  Emerson,  and  reputed 
to  be  a  person  of  uncommon  refinement  and  depth  of 
insight,  I  never  knew.  She  belonged  to  a  well- 
known  family  widely  honored  in  Connecticut  and 
Massachusetts,  her  father  being  Judge  John  Elderkin  John 
Waldo  of  Canterbury,  Connecticut,  at  the  time  a 
local  leader  of  the  "Federalists,"  who  viewed  with  ; 
alarm  the  democracy  of  his  age.  In  one  of  his 
speeches  he  decried  the  "hard  times  in  Connecticut/' 
and  insisted  that  there  would  "never  be  good  times 
again  until  every  farm  hand  would  once  more  work 
all  day  for  a  sheep's  head  and  pluck."  He  then 
went  on  also  to  say  that  the  trouble  lay  in  the 
"little  red  schoolhouses  scattered  over  the  hills, 
which  preach  the  doctrines  of  equality  and  se- 
dition." I  should  here  explain  that  my  mother, 
who  preserved  the  record,  was  in  no  way  sympathetic 
with  these  views  of  her  august  ancestor. 


To  return  now  to  my  more,  immediate  story,  it 
was  in  the  year  1830  or  thereabouts  that  my  grand- 
father, Rufus  Jordan,  accompanied  by  his  wife  Re- 
becca, his  sons  Hiram  and  Moses,  and  his  daughters 

C  53 


The  Days  of  a  Man  1:1830 

"Going  Lucina,  Lydia,  Rebecca,  and  Mary,  left  Lake 
West"  Champlain  and  moved  across  the  country  after  the 
fashion  of  those  times  in  what  was  afterward  called 
a  "prairie  schooner"  to  the  Great  Holland  Purchase 
in  western  New  York,  a  group  of  townships  then 
mostly  included  in  the  county  of  Ontario.  The  first 
halt  was  at  Arcadia l  in  what  is  now  Wayne  County, 
a  rich  farming  country  which  nevertheless  seemed 
to  the  wanderers  less  healthy  than  the  Adirondacks 
from  which  they  had  come.  Accordingly,  after  a 
stay  of  a  few  years,  they  moved  still  farther  west- 
ward, settling  in  what  was  at  that  time  a  part  of 
the  township  of  Warsaw,  then  in  the  county  of 
Genesee.  The  land  they  selected  was  high  and 
rolling,  crossed  by  the  bright,  clear  headwaters  of 
Oatka  River,  a  smaller  tributary  of  which  became 
known  as  "Grandpa  Jerdan's  Creek."  Later  the 
southern  half  of  Genesee  was  separated  from  the 
rest  to  form  Wyoming,  with  Warsaw  as  county  seat, 
the  six-mile-square  township  south  of  Warsaw  being 
first  known  as  Hebe  after  the  classical  fashion  of 
those  days.2  This  name  was  later  changed  to  Gaines- 
ville in  honor  of  General  Edmund  Pendleton 
Gaines  of  Virginia,  a  "hero  in  the  siege  of  Fort 
Erie"  in  the  War  of  1812  —  a  transformation  I  have 
always  regretted,  as  I  should  have  chosen  "Hebe" 
rather  than  Gainesville  as  a  birthplace. 

1  Here  at  that  time  lived  Joseph  Smith,  the  founder  of  Mormonism,  who 
"translated"  the  famous  plates  of  the  Book  of  Mormon  reputed  to  have  been 
dug  up  in  the  neighborhood,  the  original  hieroglyphics  of  which  were  read 
(according  to  tradition)  by  the  aid  of  two  magic  glasses,  the  "Urim  and 
Thummim." 

2  A  system  initiated  by  one  of  the  head  surveyors  of  the  great  tract  of 
central  New  York  to  the  east  of  the  Holland  Purchase,  each  township  mapped 
by  him  having  received  a  name  drawn  from  his  Latin  repertory.    Examples 
still  extant  are  Ithaca,  Utica,  Troy,  Syracuse,  Rome,  Ulysses,  Homer,  Virgil, 
Ovid,  and  Hesiod. 


HIRAM  JORDAN,    1 886 


1833]   Migration  of  Jordans  and  Haw  leys 

During  the  journey  from  Arcadia  to  Warsaw,  the 
Jordans  had  fallen  in  with  another  migrating  group 
similarly  bound,  consisting  of  David  Hawley,  his 
wife,  Anne  Waldo,  and  his  three  sons  and  three 
daughters,  who  were  moving  from  Whitehall  (county 
seat  of  Washington  County)  near  Lake  George.  On 
the  way,  Huldah,  the  eldest,  became  engaged  to  my 
father,  to  whom  she  was  married  at  Warsaw  on 
May  22,  1833.  The  young  couple  now  bought  an 
attractive  farm  situated  on  the  highway  leading 
from  Gainesville  to  Warsaw,  six  miles  away.  Across  rhe 
the  road  was  a  magnificent  forest  of  sugar  maples,  Jordan 
the  finest  I  ever  saw,  and  along  our  side,  in  front  of  *arm 
the  house,  Father  planted  an  avenue  of  the  same 
trees.  The  farm  itself,  comprising  at  first  only  100 
acres,  afterward  grew  to  150  and  finally  to  225,  thus 
extending  backward  from  the  road  for  three  quarters 
of  a  mile.  To  the  west  and  about  the  house  the 
ground,  being  "maple  land,"  was  very  rich.  Several 
of  the  hills  farther  back,  however,  were  originally 
largely  covered  with  hemlock  trees,  and  where  the 
hemlock  grows  the  soil  is  always  light  and  poor. 

The  hills  that  crossed  the  farm  were,  in  fact,  part 
of  a  broad  terminal  moraine  of  a  vanished  continental 
glacier,  and  to  the  north  of  the  house  rose  a  steep 
ridge  made  up  entirely  of  glacial  debris.  On  the 
farther  side  lay  a  small,  deep  glacial  pond,  full  in 
the  winter  but  going  almost  dry  in  summer.  This 
we  stocked  with  catfish  —  Ameiurus  melas  —  locally 
known  as  "bullheads"  (in  New  England  "horned 
pout")  brought  from  Silver  Lake,  a  much  larger 
glacial  relic  eight  miles  to  the  northeast.  On  the 
little  tarn  with  its  eager  and  toothsome  fishes,  I  had 
my  first  lessons  in  angling  —  and  in  swimming  as 

C73 


The  Days  of  a  Man  £1833 

well.  And  I  still  remember  vividly  my  first  experience 
there  with  my  father;  as  he  stepped  into  deep 
water  with  me,  the  little  boy,  clinging  to  his  neck, 
I  said:  "/  guess  Mother  better  come!" 

Cranberry  Farther  back  was  a  noted  cranberry  pond,  a  huge 
pond  spring  of  pure,  cold  water  without  inlet  or  outlet, 
covering  nearly  three  acres,  but  with  only  a  few 
rods  of  clear  space,  the  rest  being  covered  by  a 
floating  network  of  coarse  water-moss  —  Sphagnum 
—  held  in  a  firm  grip  by  the  entangled  roots  of  the 
two  species  of  cranberries.  Through  the  network  at 
intervals  were  holes  kept  open  by  muskrats.  On 
the  Sphagnum  grew  abundantly  two  rare  orchids  — 
Calopogon  and  Pogonia  —  with  other  unusual  plants, 
notably  the  beautiful  little  Swamp  Laurel  —  Kalmia 
glauca  —  while  the  whole  area  was  surrounded  by  a 
fringe  of  blueberries  of  two  species,  and  the,  rare 
Swamp  Holly  —  Nemopanthes. 

In  1874,  my  father  having  inherited  a  sum  of 
money  from  an  uncle,  Moses  Jordan  of  West  Chester, 
Pennsylvania,  we  were  enabled  to  build  a  new 
house  1  and  to  purchase,  as  already  implied,  con- 
siderable valuable  land,  including  what  was  left  of 
the  maple  forest  mentioned  above,  which  adjoined 
the  original  property.  After  Father's  sudden  death 
on  June  10,  1888,  the  whole  place  was  leased  for  a 
time  to  my  nephew,  Ernest  R.  Beadle,  and  later 
sold  by  my  mother. 

I  was  the  fourth  of  five  children.  The  eldest, 
Lucia,  who  married  James  Beadle,  a  neighbor,  was 
a  woman  of  high  intelligence  and  noble  disposition, 
a  graduate  of  the  local  "Female  Seminary"  —  there 
being  then  no  colleges  for  women  —  and  the  author 

1  Burned  in  1916. 

C83 


fus 


1862]  Brothers  and  Sisters 

of  clever  verses,  mostly  of  a  satirical  turn.  She  died 
in  1889  in  Chicago,  at  the  home  of  our  sister  Mary. 
My  older  brother,  Rufus  Bacon  Jordan,  was  a 
tall,  dark  youth  of  grave  demeanor  and  gentle  and 
refined  nature,  with,  nevertheless,  a  very  charac- 
teristic  fund  of  dry  humor.  As  a  boy  his  passion 
was  for  horses,  as  mine  was  for  sheep.  About  a 
horse  there  was  nothing  he  did  not  know,  and  he 
was  intensely  interested  in  all  horse  traits  and 
activities.  Thirteen  years  younger  than  he,  I  held 
him  in  absolute  worship,  and  I  still  remember  the 
long  period  of  loneliness  and  distress  after  his  un- 
timely death.  Night  after  night  I  would  dream  that 
it  was  not  true  and  that  he  had  returned  safe  and 
sound.  In  the  spring  of  1862  he  went  to  Washington 
with  James  Beadle  to  enlist,  but  being  immediately 
stricken  down  with  "army  fever/'  was  sent  home  to 
die.  The  day  they  brought  him  back  I  was  in  a 
new  clearing,  engaged  in  the  congenial  task  of  burn- 
ing stumps,  when  Lucia  came  rushing  across  the 
field  to  tell  me  that  if  I  wanted  to  see  my  brother 
alive  I  must  hurry  to  the  house.  In  1907  I  dedicated  «r^ 
"The  Human  Harvest/'  dealing  with  the  biological  Human 
effects  of  war, 

"  To  the  memory  of  my  brother,  Rufus  Bacon  Jordan,  of 
the  Human  Harvest  of  1862."  l 

1  I  do  remember  in  the  far-off  years, 
Through  the  long  twilight  of  the  August  nights 
(The  nights  of  half  a  century  ago) 
I  waited  for  my  brother,  whom  I  loved  — 
I  waited  for  my  brother,  and  he  came  — 
Came  but  in  dreams  and  never  came  again, 
For  he  was  with  the  Sisterhood  of  Fate; 
Man  is;   Man  is  not;   Man  shall  never  be. 

From  "In  the  Wilderness";  Stanford  Phi  Beta  Kappa  Poem,  1912. 

C93 


The  Days  of  a  Man 


My  only  other  brother,  Hawley,  died  in  infancy. 
Mary  Mary,  a  very  intelligent  and  handsome  girl  three 
Jordan  years  younger  than  I,  was  the  third  woman  to  enter 
Edwards  Cornejj  University.  There  she  became  engaged  to 
Edward  Junius  Edwards,  a  former  fellow  student  at 
Lombard  University,  where  I  taught  for  a  year 
after  graduating  from  college.  Minneapolis  has  long 
been  her  home.  For  some  years  before  his  death  in 
1915,  her  husband  interested  himself  in  genealogy, 
and  during  the  process  of  working  out  his  children's 
ancestry,  half  of  which  was  also  mine,  he  brought  to 
light  many  unknown  or  forgotten  details  of  family 
origin  and  connections.  Mrs.  Edwards  is  the  mother 
of  six,  Arthur  (Stanford,  1900),  Paul,  Junius,  Flora 
(Mrs.  Bailey),  Marjorie  (Mrs.  Blake),  and  Mary 
Edwards. 


Birth-  I  was  born  on  the  I9th  day  of  January,  1851,  in 
place  the  old  brown  farmhouse,  left  unpainted  in  my  boy- 
hood to  save  money  so  that  we  children  might  be 
educated.  Originally  —  that  is,  in  the  early  days 
before  my  father  bought  the  farm  —  it  had  been  a 
wayside  inn,  a  habit  never  quite  abandoned.  It 
stood  on  the  county  road  one  mile  northeast  of  the 
village  of  Gainesville,  fifty  miles  south  of  Roch- 
ester, and  sixty  southeast  of  Buffalo.  Vines  covered 
the  front  of  the  house,  and  I  therefore  used  some- 
times to  say  that.  "I  became  a  botanist  in  self-de- 
fense." 

The  Gainesville  of  my  day  consisted  chiefly  of  two 
long  streets  meeting  at  a  right  angle.  Just  south  of 
their  junction  a  large  stream,  East  Coy  Creek,  flowed 
obliquely  through  the  town  on  its  way  to  the  Genesee 

I  10  3 


1851]  Home  Town 

River.  The  "East  Coy"  apparently  came  by  its 
name  in  a  curious  way.  Six  miles  to  the  south,  and  Creek 
for  some  distance  parallel  to  it,  runs  a  sister  stream 
bearing  the  alleged  Indian  name  of  "Wiscoy," 
which,  naturally  suggesting  "West  Coy,"  by  im- 
plication made  our  creek  the  "East  Coy."  Above 
the  town  this  was  dammed  to  form  a  mill  pond,  in 
which  I  used  to  swim  and  fish  for  bullheads.  Below 
the  town  and  down  through  the  woods  trout  were 
always  plenty,  a  fact  the  world  at  large  has  been 
slow  to  discover,  for  whenever  I  revisit  the  region, 
I  still  find  big  ones  abundant  under  the  bridge  on  - 
the  road  to  East  Pike.  Other  kinds  —  sunfishes, 
darters,  minnows,  and  suckers  —  are  also  common 
there,  notably  the  speckled  "Johnny  Darter"  and 
the  slim,  low-backed,  pirate-rigged  fantail  darter, 
—  charming,  tiny  creatures  which  interested  me  in 
my  youth  and  have  been  near  to  my  heart  ever 
since. 

Ordinarily  the  stream  could  be  waded  almost  any- 
where by  an  enterprising  boy,  though  at  intervals 
there  were  deep  holes  for  swimming  and  for  washing 
sheep.  In  the  spring,  however,  it  often  became  a 
raging  torrent,  flooding  the  neighboring  fields  and 
sometimes  carrying  away  the  bridges. 

The  village  —  or,  as  we  called  it,  "the  Creek" —  Games- 
counted  five  or  six  hundred  people,  the  only  "  foreign  "  ville 
element  being  a  considerable  group  of  farmers  from 
the   North  of  England.     At   the   junction   of  the 
two   main  streets  stood  the   "Female   Seminary"; 
adjoining  it  rose  the  three  principal  churches,  Con- 
gregationalist,  Methodist,  and  Universalist.    Archi- 
tecturally of  the  usual  New   England  order,  with 
tall,    sharp    spires,    they   were   painted   white   and 

C  ii  3 


The  Days  of  a  Man  1:1856 

flanked  by  horse  sheds.  In  their  yards  grew  the 
wild  caraway,  a  spicy  condiment  which  furnished 
welcome  relief  to  children  during  the  long  sermons 
and  congregational  singing. 

Across  the  stream  was  the  largest  store,  and  near 
by  an  inn  which  bore  the  conspicuous  and  sometimes 
inaccurate  name  of  "The  Temperance  House." 
Abutting  on  these  was  a  small  common  running 
steeply  down  to  the  creek,  on  the  bank  of  which, 
farther  up,  stood  the  big  gristmill  and  still  farther 
on,  the  mill  pond. 

Early  My  first  clear  recollection  is  that  of  a  little  object 
recoiiec-  ;n  a  recj  calico  dress  skipping  down  the  path  past 
the  first  row  of  currant  bushes  on  the  way  to  the 
well.  A  remarkable  well,  I  may  say,  very  clear  and 
cold,  tapping  deep  streams  from  underneath  glacial 
deposits.  For  it  we  then  used  a  chain  pump,  and 
as  the  water  leaked  back  over  the  valves  in  the  chain 
it  seemed  to  me  to  keep  saying,  in  a  deep  guttural, 
"Red  worm,  red  worm!" 

My  next  definite  recollection  is  of  being  at  the 
house  of  my  cynical  uncle,  Francis  Jenison,  and  of 
explaining  to  him  that  "yesterday  I  was  four; 
today  I'm  five!"  At  about  the  same  time  I  dis- 
tinctly recall  shouting  for  Fremont  and  Dayton,  and 
asking  my  brother  Rufus  —  referring  to  the  rival 
candidates,  Buchanan  and  Breckenridge  —  what  "a 
brecken  ridge"  really  was. 

A  year  or  two  later  Rufus  undertook  to  teach  me 
to  handle  a  horse,  and  set  me  to  leading  one  across 
a  field.  But  the  beast  traveled  faster  than  I  could, 
and  kept  circling  around  me.  Growing  impatient 
at  my  clumsiness,  Rufus  said  to  my  mother:  "That 

C  12  3 


1856]  Home  Life 


boy  never  will  have  any  sense;"  but  she  replied 
that  he  "mustn't  talk  so  to  a  mother;  he  will  learn 
as  he  grows  up." 

Throughout  my  childhood,  cooperative  quilting 
parties  were  a  common  social  feature,  groups  of  bees 
neighbor  women  gathering  of  afternoons  at  the 
various  houses  to  help  each  other  out.  In  this  way 
a  good  deal  of  work  was  agreeably  accomplished 
with  a  minimum  expenditure  of  time  and  perhaps  a 
maximum  of  gossip.  For  the  process,  as  most  of 
my  readers  know,  two  layers  of  cloth  of  the  de- 
sired dimensions  —  usually  of  vari-colored  squares  or 
strips  of  calico  sewed  together  in  simple  or  intricate 
design  —  and  with  generous  interlining  of  cotton 
batting,  were  stretched  over  a  wooden  frame  1  and 
quilted  through  and  through  by  hand.  The  result 
was  a  "comforter"  worthy  of  the  name.  Often  also 
the  finished  article  was  most  attractive,  and  some 
of  the  patterns,  I  am  told,  were  both  famous  and 
difficult.  Today  the  "puff"  of  simple  design  and 
frequently  of  expensive  material  has  crowded  out 
the  old-fashioned  quilt,  as  the  demands  of  modern 
life  leave  little  leisure  for  piecing  bits  of  calico! 

Once  when  a  "quilting  bee"  was  on  at  our  house, 
I  walked  about  under  the  frame  and  got  playfully 
thumped  on  the  head  by  the  thimbles  of  the  women 
working  above.  I  remember  also  being  considerably 
puzzled  by  a  proposal  of  marriage  from  one  of  the 
ladies  present.  This  I  took  somewhat  seriously, 
though  it  seemed  to  me  best  to  wait  a  little  while,  as 
I  might  perhaps  do  better.  Moreover,  I  had  already 

1  This  was  so  adjusted  that  the  quilt  lay  perfectly  flat  and  three  or  four 
women  worked  on  each  side.  Then,  as  they  continuously  progressed  toward 
the  middle,  the  finished  portions  were  rolled  under  out  of  the  way,  the  side  slats 
being  made  movable  for  that  purpose. 

C  13  3 


The  Days  of  a  Man  £1858 

assured  my  sister  Lucia  that  when  I   grew  up  I 
would  marry  her. 

One  of  my  youthful  duties  was  to  help  sew  strips 
of  cloth  together  for  rag  carpets  which  were  woven 
in  a  loom,  the  same  the  women  of  the  family  some- 
times used  for  the  making  of  homespun  cloth. 
Where  each  strip  was  of  a  solid  color  we  planned 
distinct  patterns,  the  different  shades  and  widths 
alternating  regularly;  in  inventing  such  designs  I 
acquired  some  little  skill.  When  the  colors  were 
broken,  the  result  was  called  "hit  or  miss." 
The  old  Among  my  earliest  memories  is  that  of  a  large, 
dock  old-fashioned  timepiece  which  inoffensively  attended 
to  its  own  business  when  "the  folks "  were  there, 
but  had  a  distressing  and  eerie  way  of  pounding  out 
the  slow  minutes  whenever  I  was  left  to  myself. 
The  psychological  effect  of  a  big  clock  on  young 
boys  has  perhaps  never  been  fully  appreciated,  for 
as  soon  as  they  are  alone  the  thing  seems  to  devote 
special  attention  to  them,  ticking  off  the  time  with 
exasperating  leisure  and  an  insistent  loudness  which 
it  never  otherwise  possesses. 

As  a  boy  of  seven  or  eight  I  used  to  amuse  myself 
by  walking  along  the  rail  fence  which  bounded  the 
farm,  meanwhile  imagining  various  historical  epi- 
sodes. Each  rail,  for  instance,  would  represent  the 
career,  easy  or  difficult,  of  some  king  or  other.  A 
little  later  I  occasionally  worked  out  on  European 
maps  visionary  campaigns  in  which  I  imagined  one 
nation  after  another  fighting  to  correct  its  frontier; 
in  these  conflicts,  my  hero  (usually  named  David 
Emanuel  Starr)  always  had  the  proper  idea  as  to 
national  boundaries!  This  particular  fantasy,  how- 
ever, soon  merged  itself  into  my  later  and  really 

C  H3 


MARY  JORDAN 
EDWARDS,   1873 


LUCIA   JORDAN 
BEADLE,    1895 


RUFUS   BACON  JORDAN,   1860 


1858]  Home  Life 


congenial  task  of  map  drawing,  to  which  I  shall 
again  refer. 

Among  my  youthful  treasures  was  an  old  bayonet  Playing 
brought  back  from  Vermont  by  John  Jordan  from  soldier 
the  Revolutionary  War.  Of  its  previous  history  I 
never  knew  anything  more,  and  I  recall  nothing  of 
its  final  fate.  But  in  those  days,  like  other  boys,  I 
played  at  war,  making  a  large  collection  of  spool 
soldiers  with  which  to  supplement  my  tin  armies  of 
Austrians,  Sardinians,  and  French.  From  deep-cut 
spools  which  had  carried  coarse  thread  I  fashioned 
my  choicest  grenadiers;  experimenting,  I  found  that 
they  would  stand  better  with  the  top  sawed  off, 
and  best  of  all  if  the  bottom  were  plugged  with 
lead.  Spools  with  shallow  cut  for  fine  thread,  being 
mere  infantry,  I  valued  less,  and  the  fatalities 
among  them  from  pea-shooting  artillery  were  very 
heavy. 

Out  of  this  early  period  I  recall  a  long,  delightful  A  long 
trip  with  my  father,  who  had  to  take  a  load  of  wheat  drive 
to  the  village  of  Cuyler  on  the  Genesee  Canal  in 
Livingston  County.  That  drive  gave  us  a  better 
opportunity  to  get  acquainted  than  we  had  ever 
had  before,  and  I  found  him  surprisingly  interesting 
and  friendly.  For  he  was  sensitive  and  reticent, 
and  left  intimate  relations  mainly  to  my  mother. 
He  was  very  proud  of  his  children  —  she  knew  their 
inmost  feelings.  It  has  seemed  to  me  that  the 
average  boy  does  not  understand  his  father  as  well 
as  he  should,  while  on  the  other  hand  fathers  often 
find  it  hard  to  keep  in  touch  with  their  growing 
boys.  To  take  a  trip  together  is  a  fine  way  of  de- 
veloping comradeship. 

C  15  3 


The  Days  of  a  Man  [1859 

NO  Corporal  punishment,   by  the  way,   was  not  a 

whipping  factor  in  my  development.     So  far  as  my  memory 
goes,  I  was  never  whipped  by  either  of  my  parents 
or   by   any   one   else.      Punishment,   threats,    and 
rewards  played  no  part  in  my  upbringing. 
TO  In  my  eighth  or  ninth  year  I  had  another  wonderful 

Rochester  journey,  this  time  with  both  Father  and  Mother. 
Taking  a  horse  and  buggy,  with  a  little  stool  for 
me,  we  drove  fifty  miles  to  Irondequoit,  near  Roch- 
ester on  Lake  Ontario.  This  was  a  long  outing,  but 
full  of  interest.  We  stayed  at  the  home  of  a  rela- 
tive who  owned  a  fine  peach  orchard,  and  there 
I  made  acquaintance  with  the  luscious  fruit  which 
would  not  grow  on  our  colder  hills.  We  then  went 
twenty-five  miles  westward  to  the  town  of  Albion 
(Orleans  County)  by  way  of  the  "Ridge  Road," 
which  marks  an  ancient  shore  some  thirty  feet 
higher  than  the  present  lake  level  and  running 
parallel  with  it  from  the  Niagara  River  eastward 
to  the  St.  Lawrence.  This  highway  was  a  "plank 
road"  —  that  is,  one  covered  with  thick  planks  of 
pine  or  hemlock,  the  highest  type  of  road-making 
of  its  day.  The  current  phrase  of  the  period,  "two- 
forty  on  a  plank,"  meaning  a  mile  in  two  minutes 
and  forty  seconds,  indicated  the  greatest  speed  then 
attained  by  a  trotting  horse.  That  trip  to  Rochester 
stands  out  in  my  memory  as  a  sudden  disclosure  of 
the  great  world  which  I  have  ever  since  tried  to 
explore  and  understand.  An  automobile  would  now 
cover  the  entire  round  trip  in  five  hours. 

Even  as  a  boy  in  school,  though  large  and  strong, 
I  hated  all  quarreling.  But  I  remember  having  at 
about  the  age  of  nine  a  very  bitter  fight  over  some 

n  16] 


Sense  of  Fea 


incident  long  since  forgotten,  with  an  antagonist  A  tragedy 
older  than  I,  though  smaller.    The  tussle  took  place  of  pride 
on  a  pond  covered  with  ice.     Both  being  afflicted 
with  "the  tragedy  of  pride,"  neither  was  willing  to 
give  up,  and  the  combat  ran  on  unduly.    The  final 
result  was  "peace  without  victory."    In  this,  or  in 
any  other  bout  in  which  I  have  engaged,  I  do  not 
remember  actually  losing  my  temper.     During  all 
my   career   I   have   acted   upon   Senator   Benton's 
motto,  "I  never  quarrel,  but  I  sometimes  fight." 

And  only  once,  so  far  as  I  recall,  have  I  ever  felt  Overpower- 
an  overpowering  sense  of  fear.  This  experience  ing  fear 
occurred  when  I  was  nine  years  old.  I  was  then 
engaged  in  carrying  a  bucket  of  young  pout  from 
our  little  tarn  to  plant  them  in  the  "Cranberry 
Pond."  The  only  open  space  of  clear  water  in  that 
"quaking  bog"  was  very  deep,  and  shadowed  on  the 
land  side  by  tall  hemlocks;  out  into  it  ran  a  fallen 
trunk  on  which  one  could  walk  for  a  certain  distance. 
Under  the  trees  it  was  dark,  and  in  their  tops  the 
winds  were  moaning  loudly.  Meanwhile  I  could  see 
on  the  shore  three  weird  "deadfall"  traps,  each 
baited  with  a  sheep's  head  to  catch  predatory  foxes. 

As  I  approached  the  open  water,  the  noise  in  the 
trees,  the  sight  of  the  skulls,  and  the  loneliness  of 
the  whole  scene  all  at  once  combined  to  give  me  a 
sudden  panic.  Dumping  the  fish  into  the  wet  moss 
at  my  feet,  I  ran  back  along  the  log  and  scuttled 
home.  For  no  rational  cause  at  all  I  felt  a  cold  chill 
of  fear  which  I  still  remember,  and  which  enables 
me  to  understand  similar  emotions  in  other  people 
under  great  stress.  But  I  myself  have  never  had 
the  same  feeling  again.  The  nearest  approach  to 
it  came  at  about  the  same  time,  when,  looking  out 


"The  Days  of  a  Man  £1860 

from  the  village  schoolhouse,  I  saw  flames  bursting 
through  the  windows  of  the  "Female  Seminary/' 
Shrieking  "THE  SEMINARY  is  ON  FIRE!"  I  gathered 
up  my  books  and  made  for  home,  a  terrified 
youngster. 

Timidity  Nevertheless,  while  I  have  always  been  more  or 
and  less  immune  to  fear  as  ordinarily  understood,  I  have 
at  times  felt  ashamed  of  my  inability  to  make  quick 
decisions  in  an  emergency.  Moreover,  as  a  child 
I  was  rather  shy  away  from  home  and  in  the  presence 
of  strangers.  For  instance,  I  still  recall  a  bewilder- 
ing timidity  whenever  I  went  to  Warsaw,  Castile, 
Hermitage,  and  Perry,  noisy  towns  where  nobody 
knew  me;  and  it  took  a  long  time  to  outgrow  that 
sense  of  being  a  helpless  stranger  in  those  unac- 
customed places.  I  also  felt  an  awed  sense  of  mystery 
whenever  I  drove  with  my  father  along  the  brink  of 
what  we  called  "the  Gulf,"  later  known  as  Rock 
Glen  —  a  narrow,  dark  chasm  with  vertical  walls 
about  two  hundred  feet  high,  through  which  the 
infant  Oatka1  River  has  cut  its  way  for  a  couple  of 
miles  down  to  the  valley  of  Warsaw.  But  when  I 
came  back  from  college  ten  years  later,  the  town 
seemed  very  small,  the  hills  not  so  high  as  they 
formerly  were,  and  the  distances  absurdly  short. 
Recently  even  Wyoming  County  (twenty-four  miles 
square)  seemed  of  trivial  dimensions  when  I  motored 
over  it  in  a  day. 

1  Pronounced  0-at'ka. 


CHAPTER  TWO 


MY  very  early  education  I  received  at  home,  and  I  teaming 
cannot  remember  when  I  did  not  know  how  to  to 
read.  But  according  to  my  mother  it  was  in  her  study 
lap,  as  she  rested  and  read  Greeley's  Tribune,  that 
I  began  to  pick  out  letters,  and  then  words.  At 
about  the  age  of  nine  I  first  went  to  school,  the  un- 
graded district  school  at  Gainesville  which  I  at- 
tended for  four  years,  and  was  then  "put  in  the 
Fourth  Reader."  From  Orlin  Cotton,  the  teacher, 
to  whom  as  a  lad  I  owed  a  good  deal  in  various  ways, 
I  had  much  sympathetic  encouragement.  Under 
him  I  studied  Latin,  and  for  writing  lessons  (in 
place  of  conventional  copybook  tasks)  he  allowed 
me  to  make  an  annotated  catalogue  of  the  rulers  of 
every  nation  of  which  I  was  able  to  secure  a  history. 
My  first  impulse  in  this  direction  had  come  from 
being  set  to  list  the  kings  of  Israel  by  a  teacher  in 
Sunday  school.  And  there  also  I  had  some  helpful  "Speaking 
voice  training,  being  encouraged  to  " speak  pieces" 
at  church  gatherings.  In  this  effort  I  took  a  good 
deal  of  interest,  doing  fairly  well,  as  I  remember. 
After  all,  there  is  no  great  difference  between 
appearing  before  a  Sunday-school  audience  and 
addressing  a  congress  or  mass  meeting.  My  last 
selection,  I  recollect,  was  J.  T.  Trowbridge's  poem 
on  Bolivar;  this  was  in  1865,  just  after  the  death  of 
Lincoln. 

In  school  I  used  to  do  my  lessons  very  rapidly 
and  then  often  amused  myself  by  inventing  or  re- 

C  193 


The  Days  of  a  Man  £1861 

calling  stories  of  adventure,  which  I  illustrated  by 
rough  drawings  oh  a  slate  or  on  scraps  of  paper.  My 
particular  cronies  seemed  to  appreciate  those  efforts, 
but  both  tales  and  pictures  have  been  long  since 
forgotten  by  their  author.  In  those  days  I  read 
eagerly  the  few  books  of  travel  I  could  secure,  espe- 
cially Dr.  Kane's  account  of  his  polar  expeditions. 
Having  dug  out  and  equipped  a  toy  boat,  I  named 
The  "Red  it  the  Red  Eric,  regretting,  however,  that  it  lacked 
Eric"  the  "red  cedar  plankings"  of  Kane's  little  craft. 

A  special  idiosyncrasy  of  mine,  never  outgrown 
and  virtually  never  modified,  is  the  feeling  for  color 
in  letters.  This  appeared  as  soon  as  I  had  anything 
to  do  with  the  alphabet.  Growing  older,  I  was 
surprised  to  find  that  some  really  intelligent  people 
fail  to  see  that  "S"  is  always  a  bright  yellow,  "R" 
a  vivid  green,  "X"  and  "Z"  scarlet,  "O"  white, 
"V"  and  "Y"  blue,  and  so  on.  Such  association 
of  color  with  letters  is  now  known  to  be  not  in- 
frequent, and  goes  by  the  clumsy  technical  name  of 
"False  Pseudochromcestbesia  or  "false  color  sense."  This  is 
color  ^  not  really  a  perception  of  color,  simply  an  association 
with  color,  which  appears  in  persons  who  are  sensi- 
tive in  peculiar  fashion  to  word  and  color  values. 
On  this  subject  I  have  in  later  years  written  two 
papers.  It  is  first  to  be  noted  that  the  color  scheme 
of  each  person  is  a  purely  individual  matter,  not 
derived  from  any  objective  source;  also,  that  it  is 
perfectly  clear  and  definite  when  first  recognized 
and  does  not  change  ;  further,  that  the  tendency  is 
inherited  hereditary.  When  Eric,  my  youngest  child,  was 
eight  years  old,  not  having  previously  referred  to 
this  matter  before  him,  I  said:  "What  color  is  'A'?" 
"Red,"  he  promptly  answered.  I  then  obtained  his 
£20] 


1864]  Love  of  Astronomy 

whole  chromatic  scale.  Five  years  later  I  once  more 
raised  the  question.  Again  he  immediately  replied 
that  "A"  was  red,  and  repeated  in  substance  the 
same  series  as  before.  He,  moreover,  seemed  slightly 
surprised  that  any  one  should  fail  to  see  the  difference 
between  red  "A"  and  yellow  "E." 

One  of  my  nieces  also  has  similar  color  associations 
with  letters,  but  her  vowels  are  mostly  colorless, 
blue  "G"  and  green  "S"  being  brightest,  while  with 
Eric  the  reverse  is  true. 

My  earliest  scientific  interest  was  in  the  stars.  Mapping 
While  husking  corn  on  autumn  evenings  I  became  the 
curious  as  to  the  names  and  significance  of  the 
celestial  bodies.  At  the  age  of  thirteen  I  had  com- 
pleted a  series  of  maps  of  all  the  visible  stars,  indi- 
cating their  magnitudes  and  the  boundaries  of  the 
constellations.  Going  out  from  the  house,  I  would 
measure  roughly  with  a  pencil  the  position  of  four  or 
five  stars  at  a  time,  and  then  return  inside  to  plot  them 
on  my  chart.  To  block  out  the  constellations,  I  had 
recourse  to  Burritt's  "Geography  of  the  Heavens." 

That  passion  of  mine  persists  curiously  in  the 
middle  name  I  have  ever  since  borne,  and  which  I 
myself  chose  for  two  reasons.  The  one  sprang 
from  my  love  of  astronpmy,  the  other  had  to  do  with 
my  mother's  great  admiration  for  the  writings  of 
Thomas  Starr  King  and  her  profound  respect  for  his 
personality.  I  ought  also  to  say  that  while  the  name 
Starr  does  not  appear  in  my  ancestry,  the  descendants 
of  the  noted  Comfort  Starr  have  formally  adopted 
me  as  one  of  the  "tribe." 

With  astronomy  I  turned  toward  terrestrial  ge- 
ography. This  has  really  been  my  main  passion  in 

C2I    3 


The  Days  of  a  Man  £1865 

Mapping   life,  and  around  it  all  my  scientific  work  has  built 
tbe          itself  up.    I  now  made  elaborate  colored  maps  of  all 
world       parts  of  the  world,  copied  from  wherever  I  found 
material  —  no    regular    atlas    being    at    that    time 
accessible  to  me;  township  maps  of  the  counties  of 
New  York,  county  maps  of  the  different  states,  and 
provincial  and  other  maps  of  the  rest  of  the  globe. 
These  were  done  with  more  persistence  than  clever- 
ness, but  their  broad  range  enabled  me  in  after  life 
to  look  upon  the  whole  world  as  of  one  piece.    The 
eagerness    I    then    displayed    rather    worried    my 
mother,  who  thought  I  ought  to  be  doing  something 
more  relevant,  and  once  she  hid  all  my  material, 
hoping  to  turn  my  attention  to  something  else. 
other  My  youthful  passions  for  astronomy  and  geography 

rnerberar  were  curiously  paralleled  in  Eric's  mental  develop- 
ment. When  about  seven  years  old,  entirely  on  his 
own  initiative  he  suddenly  acquainted  himself  with 
the  names  and  positions  of  the  stars  he  could  see. 
This  diversion  overlapped  an  earlier  hereditary 
"reverberation,"  the  study  of  maps,  though  with 
me  the  order  was  reversed  and  I  made  maps  while 
he  planned  elaborate  itineraries.  I  once  asked  him 
to  name  the  capital  of  Greece.  "Athens,"  he  replied. 
"Of  Scorpio?"  I  quizzically  inquired.  "Antares," 
was  the  instant  answer,  as  if  state  and  constellation 
were  organized  alike.  Quoting  then  from  Manilius 
the  following  lines: 

Below  his  girdle  near  his  knee  he  bears 
The  bright  Arcturus,  fairest  of  the  stars  — 

"Who  was  that?"  I  asked.  And  to  my  astonish- 
ment he  calmly  replied :  "  Bootes."  But  having  made 
a  list  of  the  constellations  with  variable  stars,  that 
n  223 


1898]  Hereditary  Tendencies 

interest  with  him,  as  with  me,  gave  way  rather 
suddenly  to  a  deeper  one  in  living  organisms  — 
things  we  could  study  intimately  because  we  could 
lay  hands  on  them.  I  turned  to  flowers,  he  to  shells.  Eric's 
At  the  age  of  eight,  away  from  home  and  family  for  shells 
the  first  time,  he  sent  me  a  written  list  of  the  fossil 
shells  he  had  found  in  Santa  Monica  Canyon.  There, 
as  the  guest  of  Mr.  George  W.  Edmond  and  with 
encouragement  from  his  host,  he  had  matched  the 
pictures  in  Ralph  Arnold's  monograph  on  the  fossil 
mollusks  of  southern  California.  The  relations  of 
genus  and  species  he  seemed  to  understand  perfectly. 
Two  years  later  he  modestly  remarked  to  a  family 
friend:  "I  don't  like  to  talk  about  it,  but  I  know 
more  about  shells  than  my  father  does."  Which 
was  literally  true.  And  I  may  add  that  his  first 
scientific  paper,  "Notes  on  a  Collection  of  Shells 
from  Trinidad,  California,"  with  descriptions  of  two 
new  species  of  Odostomia,  and  written  at  the  age  of 
fifteen,  was  recently  published  by  the  United  States 
National  Museum. 

In  my  daughter  Barbara,  who  at  seven  years  Barbara's 
spontaneously  took  up  the  study  of  birds,  the  same  birds 
power  of  discrimination  as  to  the  meaning  of  natural 
classification  was  even  more  perfectly  developed. 
The  affinities  of  any  newly  acquired  bird  she  seemed 
to  understand  instinctively.  For  instance,  when  she 
first  held  in  her  hand  the  glossy  black  Pbainopepla, 
she  declared  that  it  belonged  to  the  waxwing  family, 
a  conclusion  reached  by  ornithologists  after  much 
discussion.  One  day,  also,  I  brought  home  the  skin  of 
the  female  of  a  rather  insignificant-looking  streaked 
sparrow  from  southern  California  and  left  it  without 
explanation.  I  had  not  taught  her  to  use  the  books  i 


The  Days  of  a  Man  £1865 

on  Ornithology,  but  when  I  returned  I  found  that 
she  had  got  at  them  and  reported  correctly  that  the 
little  bird  was  Amphispiza  belli. 

It  should  perhaps  be  explained  that  these  and 
similar  details  regarding  the  children  are  here  given 
at  the  special  request  of  a  psychologist  interested  in 
problems  of  heredity. 


Turning  Botany  was  my  deepest  youthful  interest.  In- 
to  deed,  on  my  first  day  at  school,  I  drew  out  from  the 
library  a  little  book  on  flowers.  Studying  the 
heavens  in  winter,  in  the  summer  I  gave  my  spare 
time  to  the  listing  of  the  plants  of  our  region,  be- 
ginning with  "Wood's  Botany"  as  a  guide,  but 
turning  afterward  to  the  more  difficult  and  more 
exact  "Manual"  by  Dr.  Gray. 

The  country  round  about  my  home  was  very  rich 
in  wild  flowers,  and  in  my  early  botanical  studies  I 
perhaps  strained  a  point  by  adorning  the  conveniently 
white  walls  of  my  bedroom  with  the  names  of  the 
different  plants  as  I  identified  them  in  turn.  At 
school  no  attention  was  paid  to  this  interest  of 
mine.  Fortunately,  however,  I  soon  made  a  helpful 
acquaintance,  a  curious  old  man,  Joshua  Ellenwood 
by  name.  Though  he  lived  a  lonely  life  on  a  poor 
little  farm,  and  wholly  lacked  scientific  education, 
he  had  nevertheless  wandered  far  and  wide  through 
the  country  round  about,  and  had  come  to  know 
most  of  the  plants.  His  vixen  wife  held  in  scorn  the 
"eccentric"  tastes  of  her  husband,  who  was,  more- 
over, ailing  and  was  considered  by  most  of  his 
neighbors  as  shiftless  and  a  waster  of  time. 
C  24] 


1865]  Study  of  Flowers 

In  the  over-long  winter,  snow  lies  heavy  on  the  Flowers 
Wyoming  hills.  With  me  as  a  boy  the  yearning  for  °f 
spring  used  to  rise  to  a  passion  long  before  the  spring 
swelling  of  the  buds.  The  early  flowers  were  a 
congtant  joy,  —  the  succulent  spring  beauty,  dainty 
rue-anemone,  "half-venturing  liverworts  in  furry 
coats/'  bloodroot,  wake-robins  of  three  species  — 
red,  white,  and  striped  —  the  blue,  white,  and  yellow 
violets.  Later  came  the  blue  phlox,  pink  and 
fragrant  azaleas,  lobelias  blue  and  scarlet,  man- 
drakes with  their  fruits  "sweetish  and  nauseous, 
eaten  by  pigs  and  boys,"  the  tall  meadow  lilies,  the 
little  laurels  of  the  swamps  and  the  big  ones  of  the 
cliffs,  and  (perhaps  most  charming  of  all)  fantastic 
orchids  in  summer,  and  the  blue  fringed  gentian  in 
the  fall.  Trailing  arbutus,  the  first  flower  to  greet 
our  fathers  at  Plymouth  Rock,  I  never  knew  until 
I  went  to  Ithaca,  for  it  is  found  only  under  the  pines 
on  dry  uplands  and  in  maple  districts  like  ours  pines 
grow  only  in  swamps. 

Flowers  I  loved  as  flowers  —  that  is,  as  things  of  interest 
beauty  —  but  I  liked  them  the  better  because  of  in 
the   appeal   they  made   to   my   scientific   curiosity 
regarding  their  habits  and  locations,  and  (especially  trees 
in  later  years)  their  origins  and  relationships.    Ac- 
cordingly I  enjoyed  the  little  ones  as  well  as  the 
big,  and  half  a  dozen  little  ones  of  different  species, 
even  though  not  beautiful,  meant  more  to  me  than 
a  hundred  big  ones  all  of  a  kind.    A  special  proof  of 
scientific  as  distinguished  from  aesthetic  interest  is 
to  care  for  the  hidden  and  insignificant. 

A  love  for  trees  went  with  my  passion  for  flowers, 
and  the  fact  that  our  country  exhibited  several 
wholly  different  types  of  forest  never  failed  to  hold 

C  25  3 


The  Days  of  a  Man  £1866 

my  interest.  In  the  woods  about  our  home  the 
beech  and  maple  ruled  exclusively,  with  only  oc- 
casionally a  cucumber  magnolia,  basswood,  birch, 
poplar,  or  tree  of  other  kind.  Barren  ridges  were 
occupied  by  hemlocks,  and  the  swamps  by  black 
ash,  pine,  spruce,  tamarack,  and  balsam  fir,  with 
fringes  of  aspen  and  birch.  In  the  regions  farther 
east  —  from  Perry  to  Ithaca  and  beyond  — 
oaks,  both  white  and  scarlet,  dominated  —  with, 
however,  a  good  deal  of  hickory,  chestnut,  and 
pine. 

Portage  In  the  oak  and  pine  region  lay  the  scenic  features 
of  the  country,  the  noble  gorge  of  the  Genesee  at 
Portage  and  the  placid  Silver  Lake  at  Perry.  To 
both  of  these  I  went  even  more  for  rare  flowers 
than  to  enjoy  the  scenery.  Through  Portage  Gorge 
the  Genesee  has  cut  its  way  some  ten  miles  from 
Portage  Station  to  Gardow,  the  vertical  walls  of 
hard,  greenish  sandstone  rising  in  places  to  over 
400  feet,  the  river  meanwhile  plunging  down  three 
superb  cataracts.  Silver  Lake,  a  dainty  sheet  of 
water  about  four  miles  long  and  one  wide,  was  in 
my  boyhood  a  favorite  resort  for  picnics  and  for 
religious  and  other  assemblies,  as  well  as  for  boating 
and  fishing.  At  that  time  groups  of  farmers  often 
spent  a  night  there,  drawing  long  nets  or  seines, 
and  bringing  home  the  next  morning  wagon-loads  of 
whitefish,  black  bass,  pickerel,  perch,  and  bull- 
heads. 

Silver  Lake  fills  the  smallest  and  westernmost  of  a 
long  array  of  former  gorges  —  thirteen  in  number  — 
excavated  by  water  before  the  glacial  period,  then 
widened  and  all  but  one,  Oneida,  greatly  deepened 
by  grinding  ice,  after  which  they  were  transformed 
C  26] 


1 866]          Flora  of  Wyoming  County 

into  lakes  by  moraines  damming  their  original  out- 
lets. Oneida,  set  east  and  west  crosswise  of  the 
glacier,  is  broad  and  very  shallow,  contrasting 
sharply  in  this  regard  with  all  the  others.  Cayuga, 
at  the  head  of  which  lies  Ithaca,  is  the  longest  and 
largest  of  them  all. 

Silver  Lake  I  used  to  visit  with  special  botanical 
interest,  for  there  I  found  white  and  yellow  pond 
lilies  and  the  purple  pickerel  weed,  plants  which 
grew  nowhere  else  in  our  neighborhood.  And  in  the 
oak  woods  about  I  used  to  gather  the  fringed  gentian 
in  its  season.  Under  the  pine  and  around  the  rocks 
at  Portage  were  still  other  interesting  forms.  The 
county,  I  came  to  recognize,  had  three  entirely  Difference 
distinct  floras,  besides  the  special  flora  of  the  spruce  ^  floras 
and  balsam  swamps.  One,  as  already  indicated, 
belonged  to  the  beech  and  maple  woods,  one  to  the 
oak  lands,  and  the  other  to  the  rocks.  Afterward, 
in  college  vacations,  I  continued  my  studies  of  the 
plants  of  the  Genesee  region,  and  presented  for  my 
graduating  thesis  as  Master  of  Science  at  Cornell 
in  1872  a  paper  entitled  "The  Flora  of  Wyoming 
County."  This  was  a  rather  intensive  study  of  the 
local  relations  of  plants  to  soil  and  other  con- 
ditions. 

Unfortunately  I  had  no  training  in  drawing  and  I  Painting 
never  learned  the  art  of  perspective.    But  at  about  tbe 
fifteen  years  of  age  I  began  painting  the  wild  flowers 
of  the  neighborhood,  and  people  to  whom  Mother 
proudly  showed  my  pictures  said  I  had  "genius." 
Certainly  I  had  a  talent  for  discriminating  color  and 
form;   my  efforts,  however,  never  went  beyond  the 
sketching  of  flowers  and  fishes  to  preserve  their 
bright  colors,  and  in  recent  years  the  making  of 

C  273 


The  Days  of  a  Man 


gorgeous  cartoons  to  please  Eric.1  The  lack  of 
training  in  these  regards  I  have  always  regretted, 
not  alone  because  it  would  have  been  a  direct  help 
in  my  scientific  studies,  but  also  because  the  accu- 
rate use  of  line  and  color  is  a  factor  in  mental  training 
and  a  "  means  of  grace"  in  the  affairs  of  life. 
NO  Another  art  in  which  I  should  have  taken  great 

songbird  pleasure  was  denied  me  by  Nature.  A  favorite 
winter  diversion  of  the  youth  of  my  time  was  the 
"singing  school/'  Everywhere  in  the  country 
villages  of  that  region,  classes  were  formed  by  some 
musician,  usually  from  a  larger  town  near  by.  Being 
mildly  interested  in  musical  notation,  and  having  an 
accurate  sense  of  time,  I  was  at  first  regarded  as  a 
promising  pupil.  But  my  sense  of  pitch  was  very 
faulty,  and  one  teacher  finally  said  that  "I  might 
perhaps  some  day  learn  to  sing,  but  he  didn't  see 
how."  And  I  never  did.  Meanwhile,  though  not  a 
singer,  I  was  good  at  athletic  sports.  In  jumping, 
especially  in  high  jumping,  and  running  I  excelled; 
and  I  made  some  progress  in  boxing,  wrestling,  and 
fencing  with  wooden  swords. 


Dickens  Along  with  my  developing  interests  in  science, 
the  world  of  literary  fiction  was  suddenly  opened  up. 
This  came  through  my  introduction  to  "David 
Copperfield,"  then  just  published.  One  of  our 

1  Some  of  these,  done  over  in  black  and  white  and  accompanied  by  ap- 
propriate jingles,  were  published  as  "Eric's  Book  of  Beasts."  L' envoi  reads 
as  follows: 

I  write  and  paint  in  doggerel; 

Though  all  the  muses  shriek  and  yell, 

I  go  serenely  on  my  way 

No  matter  what  such  folks  may  say! 

C  28  3 


BARBARA  JORDAN,    1898 


1 866]  Early  Reading 

neighbors,  a  man  of  some  literary  insight,  who  was 
about  to  read  the  book  aloud  to  his  family,  invited 
me  to  join  them,  and  in  his  home  I  heard  the  story 
from  beginning  to  end.  Later  I  read  "Little  Dorrit," 
"The  Old  Curiosity  Shop,"  and  "The  Pickwick 
Papers,"  followed  by  the  rest  of  the  long  series. 
But  becoming  acquainted  with  "  Pendennis,"  "Henry  Thackeray 
Esmond,"  and  "Vanity  Fair,"  I  found  greater  mental 
stimulus  in  Thackeray  than  in  Dickens.  I  also  felt 
a  certain  satisfaction  in  a  remark  of  Becky  Sharp, 
which  I  ventured  to  apply  to  myself.  "If  I  had  had 
a  husband  like  that,"  said  she,  "a  man  with  a  heart 
and  brains  too,  I  wouldn't  have  minded  his  large 
feet!"  Later  still  the  early  tales  of  Bret  Harte  Bret 
—  "The  Luck  of  Roaring  Camp,"  "Tennessee's 
Pardner,"  and  "The  Outcasts  of  Poker  Flat" 
impressed  me  strongly  with  their  fresh  vigor  in  the 
portrayal  of  frontier  character  and  their  picturing 
of  noble  scenery.  At  that  time,  still  a  boy  who  had 
not  yet  wandered  far  from  the  old  farm,  I  little 
thought  that  one  day  Calaveras  and  Tuolumne, 
"the  Santa  Clara  wheat,"  and  "the  gin  and  ginger 
woods"  would  be  part  of  my  normal  environment! 

My  father  had  a  fair  library  —  too  much  of  it, 
however,  given  to  works  of  religious  controversy  for 
which  I  cared  little,  being  already  pretty  firmly 
established  in  "liberal"  views.  But  in  the  collection 
were  several  books  of  poetry;  and  I  remember  read-  andtbe 
ing  Macaulay's  History  under  the  impression  that  poets 
it  was  fiction  of  a  very  interesting  kind.  Of  the 
poets  on  our  shelves  both  Byron  and  Moore  fasci- 
nated me,  although  in  Moore  I  enjoyed  mainly  the 
satirical,  not  the  sentimental,  verses.  The  following 
lines  especially  still  linger  in  my  memory: 

C  293 


The  Days  of  a  Man  £1859 

Why  is  a  pump  like  Viscount  Castlereagh? 
It  is  a  slender  thing  of  wood 
Which  up  and  down  its  awkward  arm  doth  sway 
And  coolly  spouts  and  spouts  and  spouts  away 
In  one  weak,  washy,  everlasting  flood. 

The  But  my  keenest  literary  satisfaction  was  derived 

>  Atlantic  ^  from  The  Atlantic  Monthly,  which  my  father  took 
Monthly  jurjng  the  entire  war  period,  and  to  which,  for  that 
matter,  one  of  us  has  ever  since  been  a  subscriber. 
For  during  all  these  years  it  has  retained  its  unique 
original  character  as  a  journal  of  high  ideals  in 
literature  and  politics.  The  Atlantic  essays  of 
Emerson,  Holmes,  Lowell,  and  above  all  Thoreau, 
had  a  good  deal  to  do  with  shaping  my  intellectual 
tastes  and  in  strengthening  my  fundamental  ideals 
of  democracy. 

Intro-          My  first  reactions  to  politics  I  date  very  clearly 

auction    kack  to  a  sermon  delivered  in  Gainesville  in  1859 

politics    ^7  Uriah  M.   Fiske,  a  Unitarian  clergyman  from 

Boston.    Mr.  Fiske  was  an  Abolitionist.    Referring 

to  the  Dred  Scott  Decision  of  the  United  States 

Supreme  Court,  confirming  the  Fugitive  Slave  Law, 

he  said:  "When  this  verdict  was  rendered  there  was 

joy  in  State  Street  —  and  in  Wall  Street  —  and  in 

Hell/'  *     This  set  me  to  thinking  and  to  asking 

questions  of  my  mother. 

The  rumblings  which  preceded  the  Civil  War,  as 
well  as  its  final  outbreak,  I  remember  distinctly — still 
more  keenly  the  struggle  itself,  overshadowing  the 
land  like  a  black  cloud  which  would  never  be  lifted. 

1  Another  of  Mr.  Fiske's  striking  epigrams  was  also  fixed  in  my  mind: 
"The  Almighty  can  accept  his  creatures  without  a  passport  from  the  church 
below." 

C  30] 


18603          Rumblings  of  Civil  War 

Before  the  war  began,  my  parents  had  diverged  Abolition 
somewhat  from  each  other  in  political  matters.  To  versus 
Father,  Abolition  was  the  main  issue,  so  that  he  Unto* 
inclined  toward  Greeley  and  the  Republicans  on  the 
ground  that,  the  slavery  question  being  a  moral  one, 
it  was  not  in  the  category  of  popular  rights.  My 
mother,  a  thoroughgoing  believer  in  popular  govern- 
ment, favored  the  Douglas  Democrats,  of  which  her 
brother,  David  Waldo  Hawley,  was  a  leading  local 
exponent.  And  I  remember  hearing  her  maintain 
in  1860  that  the  platforms  of  both  Lincoln  Re- 
publicans and  Southern  or  Breckenridge  Democrats 
violated  alike  the  principle  of  "popular  sovereignty" 
in  that  both  wished  to  determine  arbitrarily  the 
future  status  of  new  territories.  The  Southern 
Democrats,  for  example,  wished  to  legislate  slavery 
into  them,  the  Republicans  to  legislate  it  out. 
Douglas  Democrats,  on  the  contrary,  believed  that 
the  people  immediately  concerned  should  decide  for 
themselves.  But  the  attack  on  Fort  Sumter,  fol- 
lowed by  the  ordinances  of  Secession,  led  all  Douglas 
Democrats  to  stand  by  their  patriotic  leader  in  his 
support  of  the  war.  Thus  Father,  the  ardent  Abo- 
litionist, and  Mother,  the  equally  ardent  Unionist, 
then  met  on  the  same  ground,  "squatter  sovereignty" 
being  no  longer  an  issue. 

Throughout  the  war  Greeley's  Tribune,  Forney's  Greeley 
War    Press,    Harper's    Weekly,    and    The    Atlantic  fd  the 
Monthly  came  to  us  regularly.     The   Tribune,  es- 
pecially, molded  the  opinions  of  millions  by  means  of 
its  owner's  powerful  and  sincere  editorials.     It  was 
therefore   a  great   surprise  and  a  mortal  blow  to 
Greeley  that  when  in  1872  he  was  nominated  for 
the  presidency  on  a  platform  of  moderation  and 


The  Days  of  a  Man  [1859 

conciliation,  the  partisan  momentum  of  his  former 
Republican  adherents  carried  them  into  violent 
opposition. 

In  the  various  incidents  of  the  war,  the  rise  and 
Ferry  faii  of  jts  military  leaders,  I  took  a  continuous 
*Sumter  interest-  As  a  boy  of  eight,  I  recall  seeing  pictures 
of  John  Brown,  Green,  Copeland,  and  the  rest  of 
the  little  band  at  Harper's  Ferry  posted  in  Card's 
Grocery,  the  local  post  office.  Later  the  same  window 
showed  us  Major  Robert  Anderson  and  his  men, 
who  were  fired  upon  at  Fort  Sumter  by  Beauregard 
and  the  hot-headed  youth  of  Charleston;  Colonel 
Elmer  Ellsworth,  also,  shot  in  Alexandria  for  hauling 
down  a  Confederate  flag. 

Emend-  My  early  impressions  of  Lincoln  were  naturally 
potion  drawn  from  those  around  me;  my  own  appreciation 
of  his  greatness  of  character  has  grown  steadily 
from  that  first  knowledge  of  him  and  his  work.  It 
was  not  until  about  the  middle  of  the  war,  however, 
that  people  understood  his  determination  to  save 
the  Union  by  freeing  it  from  slavery,  its  worst  curse. 
The  Emancipation  Proclamation  marked  an  epoch 
in  history.  But  it  took  us  a  long  time  to  see  that 
Lincoln  was  greater  than  Seward,  greater  than  Chase, 
greater  than  any  or  all  of  his  Cabinet. 
The  call  After  the  war  began,  every  community  responded 
for  men  to  the  call  for  men,  a  demand  utterly  foreign  to  the 
experience  and  hopes  of  the  North.  One  after 
another  the  boys  went  away,  among  them,  in  the 
spring  of  1862  as  I  have  said,  my  brother  Rufus  and 
James  Beadle.  The  camp  near  Portage  Bridge, 
where  the  first  enlisted  men  of  our  section  were 
drilled,  I  distinctly  remember.  Meanwhile  I  took 
the  keenest  interest  in  the  events  of  the  struggle: 

n  32  3 


1865]  In  War  Time 

the  dismay  after  Bull  Run,  the  bloody  conflicts  in 
the  Wilderness  —  Fredericksburg,  Chancellorsville, 
and  Spottsylvania  Court  House  —  the  dreary 
marches  and  countermarches  in  the  malarial  shades 
of  the  Chickahominy,  the  slaughters  at  Cold  Harbor 
and  Malvern  Hill,  the  encouraging  victories  in  the 
West  —  more  than  offset,  however,  by  the  distressing 
failure  of  one  general  after  another  in  Virginia ;  and 
finally  the  varying  encounters  from  Petersburg  to 
Appomattox,  by  which  the  brave  armies  of  the 
South  were  outworn  and  broken  up. 
I  read  with  emotion  Stedman's  stirring  appeal  —  War 

-poets 

"  Abraham  Lincoln,  give  us  a  man  ! "  1 

and  the  vivid  sea  poems  2  of  Henry  Howard  Brownell, 
a  naval  officer,  our  "Battle  Laureate,"  as  Oliver 
Wendell  Holmes  called  him. 

With   Lee's   dramatic    surrender   under    the    old 
apple  tree  on  the  red-clay  slope  across  the  stream 

1  Not  a  leader  to  shirk  the  boastful  foe 
And  to  march  and  countermarch  our  brave 
Till  they  fade  like  ghosts  in  the  marshes  low, 
And  the  swamp  grass  covers  each  nameless  grave. 
Nor  another  whose  fateful  banners  wave 
Aye  in  disaster's  shameful  van: 
Nor  another  to  bluster,  swear,  and  rave  — 
Abraham  Lincoln,  give  us  a  man! 

8  From  "The  Bay  Fight"  I  quote  the  following: 

Drayton  strode  to  the  prow, 
Drayton  the  courtly  and  wise, 
Kindly  cynic  and  wise; 
You'd  hardly  have  known  him  now 
With  the  flame  of  fight  in  his  eyes. 

Fear  a  forgotten  form, 

Death  a  dream  of  the  eyes, 

We  were  atoms  in  God's  great  storm 

That  sped  through  the  angry  skies. 

n  33  3 


T.'he  Days  of  a  Man  £1866 

Death     from  Appomattox  Court  House,  an  immense  feeling 
°/         of  relief  swept  over  the  nation.     But  the  murder  of 
Lincoln  Lmcojn  jn  tne  midst  of  his  plans  for  generous  re- 
construction left  the  Ship  of  State  rudderless,  and 
the  event  seemed  to  cast  a  new  shadow  hardly  less 
appalling  than  that  which  so  recently  had  lifted. 
Yet  we  had  a  feeling  of  relief  that  Seward,  who  in 
public  estimation  was  then  comparable  to  Lincoln, 
still  survived. 

The  various  aspects  of  reconstruction  were  very 
confusing  to  me,  as  to  others.  A  spirit  of  revenge, 
foreign  to  Lincoln  himself,  was  unfortunately,  if 
naturally,  roused  by  his  tragic  death.  This  threw 
the  control  of  affairs  into  the  hands  of  the  most 
extreme  group,  and  the  lack  of  any  broad  mind  and 
moderating  heart  threatened  to  leave  the  Southern 
question  an  enduring  wound  in  the  history  of  our 
country.  But  I  am  not  writing  of  war  or  recon- 
struction, only  giving  the  impressions  of  an  eager 
boy  who  was  beginning  to  realize  the  nature  and 
needs  of  his  country. 


Meanwhile,  my  parents  felt  that  I  had  outgrown 
the  district  school,  and  proposed  to  send  me  to  an 
academy,  the  institution  of  that  day  corresponding 
to  the  modern  high  school.  Within  eight  miles  of 
my  home  there  were  then  three  academies.  Current 
biographical  notices  ascribe  my  preparatory  edu- 
cation to  the  largest  of  these,  that  of  Warsaw,  where, 
however,  I  was  never  enrolled.  My  brother  Rufus 
had  taken  his  academy  course  at  Pike,  the  next 
town  to  the  south  of  Gainesville;  nevertheless,  it 


i866]  Preparatory  Schooling 

was  finally  decided  that  I  myself  should  go  to  Castile, 
five  miles  to  the  southeast.  There  a  family  ac- 
quaintance was  willing  to  board  me  comfortably  at 
a  nominal  rate,  and  it  being  reasonably  near  home, 
I  could  walk  back  and  forth  at  week-ends. 

In  due  season,  therefore,  I  presented  myself  at 
the  Castile  Academy,  and  was  seated  with  an 
excellent  boy  whose  name  I  do  not  now  recall. 
But  everything  they  talked  about  I  had  previously 
been  over.  I  was,  moreover,  decidedly  homesick, 
and  so  after  two  days  I  went  back  to  my  mother, 
pleading  that  there  was  no  use  in  my  staying  at 
Castile,  as  I  already  knew  all  they  were  teaching 
there !  This  was  indeed  mainly  true  as  far  as  mathe- 
matics, science,  history,  and  English  went,  but  from 
the  boys  themselves  I  might  have  gained  much 
knowledge  of  human  nature,  for  I  was  then  dis- 
tinctly "green." 

My  further  education  was  now  continued  in  an  The 
unforeseen    fashion.      Two    young    women    from  Femde 
"Mount  Holyoke,"  Miss  Hardy  and  Miss  Eldridge,  ' 
had  some  time  before  established  the  "Gainesville 
Female  Seminary,"  of  which  my  sister  Lucia  was  a 
graduate.    The  school  was  naturally  modeled  on  the 
ideas  and  plans  of  Mary  Lyon,  founder  of  Mount 
Holyoke  and  the  pioneer  in  the  higher  education  of 
women.    At  the  age  of  fourteen  —  being  thought  a 
youth  of  promise  and  otherwise  apparently  harm- 
less —  I  was  admitted  to  classes  with  the  girls,  a 
privilege  also  accorded   at  the   same  time  to  one 
other  boy,   Egbert  Cunningham,   son  of  the  local 
Congregationalist  minister. 

At  the  Seminary  my  studies  were  French,  algebra, 
geometry,  and  penmanship,  in  all  of  which  the 

C353 


The  Days  of  a  Man  Ci866 

instruction  was  good,  and  I  came  to  write  a  surpris- 
ingly "neat"  hand  for  a  boy  of  my  size  and  careless, 
The  study  easy-going  temperament.     I   learned   also  to   read 
°f  French    about    as    readily    as    my    native    tongue. 

Thus,  during  the  long  winter  evenings,  I  used  to 
entertain  my  mother  with  French  tales  which  \ 
translated  as  I  went  along.  In  that  way  we  com- 
pleted the  whole  of  "Telemaque"  and  "Corinne." 
But  my  French  teacher,  Miss  Kilbourne,  a  typical 
and  charming  old  maid  with  long  corkscrew  curls, 
did  not  speak  the  language,  and  our  only  guide  in 
pronunciation  was  Fasquelle's  grammar,  so  that  I 
had  much  to  learn  in  that  regard  when  I  entered 
advanced  classes  at  Cornell  —  still  more  when,  long 
after,  I  undertook  scientific  work  in  Paris. 
John  Among  other  good  things  of  this  period  I  enjoyed 

Lord  the  friendship  of  John  Lord  Jenkins,  the  minister 
WJIQ  succee(jecj  Mr  Cunningham.  Jenkins  was  an 
amateur  geologist  and  used  to  take  me  and  some  of 
the  Seminary  teachers  on  various  excursions,  during 
which  we  enthusiastically  hammered  away  at  the 
crystalline  boulders  brought  down  from  Canada  by 
the  glacial  ice  and  scattered  all  over  western  New 
York.  Occasionally  also  we  found  Devonian  fossils, 
and  everywhere  and  always  objects  which  awakened 
my  interest  in  the  make-up  of  the  earth.  Mr. 
Jenkins  urged  my  parents  to  send  me  to  college. 
Mother,  being  a  little  hesitant,  said:  "What  will 
he  find  to  do  when  he  gets  through?"  "Never  mind 
that,"  replied  my  friend.  "He  will  always  find 
plenty  to  do;  there  is  always  room  at  the  top." 
This  maxim,  now  conventional,  was  new  to  us  then, 
and  it  stuck  in  my  memory. 

C  36  3 


1 866]  Baseball 


Along  about  this  time  the  wholesome  American 
sport  of  baseball  came  into  vogue.  The  modern 
game  had  then  been  developed  out  of  the  old  loose 
one  commonly  known  as  "rounders,"  although  we 
always  called  it  baseball;  this  was  played  with  an 
indefinite  number  of  bases,  and  the  soft  ball  was 
thrown  directly  at  the  runner.  At  Gainesville  we 
soon  heard  of  the  new  sport,  and  the  village  black- 
smith was  accordingly  sent  over  to  Buffalo  to  see 
how  it  went.  The  glowing  accounts  he  brought 
back  led  to  immediate  results.  At  once  we  formed 
a  team,  the  "Gainesville  Zouaves,"  flaunting  a  ville 
uniform  of  brilliant  scarlet  Zouave  trousers  and 
white  shirts,  and  announced  ourselves  ready  to  play 
against  clubs  in  neighboring  towns.  From  that 
time  up  to  1909  I  took  part  every  year  in  some  sort 
of  match  game.  At  the  age  of  fifty-eight,  while 
president  of  a  university  and  with  a  steadily  lower- 
ing batting  average,  I  reluctantly  abandoned  the 
sport  so  far  as  my  own  participation  went. 

In  the  "Zouaves"  I  began  as  left  fielder,  for  I  was 
very  good  at  catching  fly  balls;  I  was  also  the  best 
base  runner,  being  able  in  those  days  to  leap  any 
ordinary  fence.  I  was  afterwards  promoted  to  the 
rank  of  second  baseman,  and  later  I  became  a  hard 
hitter.  My  greatest  achievement  along  this  line 
occurred  in  my  junior  year  at  Cornell,  when  on  the 
old  Willow  Avenue  grounds  in  Ithaca  I  made  three 
consecutive  home  runs,  the  ball  in  each  case  passing 
over  the  roof  of  a  house  supposed  to  be  beyond  the 
center  field. 

It  has  long  been  a  matter  of  mild  interest  to  me 
that  my  baseball  career  began  about  simultaneously 
with  that  of  "Pop"  Anson,  creator  of  the  famous 

C  373 


The  Days  of  a  Man  D868 

Chicago  team,  and  with  that  of  A.  G.  Spaulding, 
leading  manufacturer  of  baseball  goods.  Sometimes 
I  used  to  think  that  my  style  of  hitting  bore  some 
resemblance  to  Anson's,  being  preferably  of 
"grounders"  along  the  base  lines. 

Learning  Playing  baseball  with  the  boys  at  "the  Creek,"  I 
chess  amused  myself  with  chess  at  home.  This  game  I 
learned  by  going  over  the  records  of  Paul  Morphy 
and  other  champions  of  the  time,  as  reported  in  the 
Philadelphia  Press.  I  thus  made  some  special  study 
of  the  different  recognized  openings.  In  college  I 
became  first  president  of  the  original  Chess  Club, 
and  was  for  much  of  the  time  the  best  player.  My 
greatest  weakness  lay  in  failure  to  convert  a  tra- 
ditional opening  into  an  effective  attack.  After  grad- 
uation I  seldom  played,  as  I  found  the  effort  quite 
fatiguing  when  added  to  other  close  mental  work. 

In  1866  I  began  to  attend  teachers'  institutes.  At 
one  of  these  I  won  a  small  prize  for  the  best  essay  on 
a  bouquet  of  flowers,  the  basis  of  my  superiority 
being  that  I  knew  each  kind  by  its  two  names,  the 
common  and  the  scientific.  In  1868,  while  planning 
to  teach  school  and  with  a  position  already  engaged 
at  Cold  Creek  in  Allegany  County,  I  went  to  an 
institute  at  Warsaw.  There  they  made  up  a  ball 
team  of  which  I  was  selected  as  first  baseman,  while 
my  friend,  Will  Smallwood,  a  youth  of  fine  wit  and 
large  stature,  then  a  college  student  at  home  on 
his  vacation,  served  as  pitcher.  At  one  point  during 
a  game  with  the  local  club,  a  very  high  fly  being 
popped  up,  Smallwood  and  I  both  went  after  it.  In 
A  broken  a  smart  collision  each  was  downed ;  I  myself  was  led 
™se  off  with  a  broken  nose,  which,  being  badly  set,  has 

n  38  3 


i868]        Teaching  a  Village  School 

ever  since  remained  slightly  askew.  That  mishap 
forced  me  to  give  up  the  Cold  Creek  position  and 
thus  made  very  material  changes  in  my  life,  as  I 
shall  presently  explain. 

When  I  recovered  from  the  accident,  my  father 
proposed  me  as  teacher  of  the  Gainesville  school,  a 
venturesome  suggestion  at  the  best.  Moreover,  as 
he  was  sole  trustee,  the  proposition  had  to  be  voted 
on  by  the  people  of  the  district.  The  decision  went 
against  me,  the  opposition  declaring  truthfully  that  . 
I  was  only  an  overgrown  boy  of  seventeen,  not 
adequate  for  the  responsibility.  Meanwhile,  how-  in  South 
ever,  at  South  Warsaw,  a  manufacturing  suburb  of  Warsaw 
the  county  seat,  a  teacher  had  been  bodily  thrown 
out  by  the  boys,  a  habit  in  that  particular  school, 
which  was  then  considered  the  most  unruly  in  the 
county.  Some  thirty  years  before,  my  father  had 
taught  there  and  had  broken  in  the  turbulent  ele- 
ment. They  now  needed  the  same  discipline  again. 
I  undertook  the  task,  and  through  a  regime  of 
"blood  and  iron"  mingled  with  conciliation,  I 
managed  to  hold  the  position  until  the  end  of  the 
term,  —  that  is  to  say,  from  November  to  March,  — 
when  I  entered  upon  my  college  course. 

As  a  matter  of  fact  certain  circumstances  were  in  Coasting 
my  favor.  On  either  side  of  the  town  stretched  the 
long  slopes  of  the  great  hills  bounding  the  Wyoming 
valley,  and  often  after  school  I  used  to  go  out  coast- 
ing with  the  pupils,  sometimes  sliding  as  far  as  two 
miles  at  one  run.  Thus  was  established  a  friendly 
truce  neutralizing  the  hard  feelings  occasionally 
engendered  in  the  schoolhouse  by  the  use  of  a  nice 
maple  ferule  which  I  at  first  employed  more  fre- 
quently than  I  should  now  think  wise,  and  which  the 

C393 


The  Days  of  a  Man  £1868 

boys  afterward  burned  —  an  incident  I  pretended 
not  to  notice.  On  the  road,  in  the  woods,  whenever 
relations  were  humanly  personal,  I  always  got  along 
finely  with  all  kinds  of  students.  But  in  my  first 
classroom  a  species  of  terrorism  seemed  to  be  de- 
manded. I  used  sometimes  to  envy  other  young 
men  for  their  "executive  ability/'  a  quality  which 
I  apparently  did  not  then  possess.  Perhaps  it 
ripens  slowly;  for  in  my  long  experience  as  uni- 
versity president  it  was  usually  thought  to  be  one 
of  my  strong  points. 


Home  In  going  over  my  early  life  I  remember  nothing 
advan-  wn;ch  j  can  fairly  count  as  an  obstacle.  My  mother 
was  intelligent,  well-read,  and  sympathetic.  My 
father,  as  I  have  said,  was  proud  of  his  children 
and  gave  us  what  help  he  could  afford  —  sometimes 
more;  for  until  the  latter  part  of  his  life  he  was 
always  more  or  less  in  debt  and  had  no  particular 
skill  in  financial  matters.  From  the  age  of  fourteen 
on,  therefore,  I  myself  carried  the  small  family 
purse  and  attended  to  all  payments.  It  was  good 
training,  but  I  must  confess  that  on  three  occasions 
I  was  an  easy  mark  for  the  older  heads  with  whom 
I  came  into  competition,  each  time  in  connection 
with  a  deal  in  sheep. 

During  my  youth  our  lack  of  money  did  not 
worry  me,  because  I  knew  very  few  who  had  more, 
and  those  few  made  little  display  of  their  wealth. 
The  farmers  of  the  region  were  as  a  rule  self-respect- 
ing and  fairly  well  off.  Among  the  twenty  or  so 
indigent  families  in  our  neighborhood,  the  obvious 

C  40  3 


i868]  Farm  Environment 

cause  of  poverty  was  either  feeble-mindedness  or 
intemperance.  At  home,  the  household  was  friendly, 
helpful,  and  happy,  not  missing  what  it  had  never 
had.  I  know  of  no  better  environment  for  a  child 
than  simple  contentment  in  such  an  atmosphere. 
Too  much  spending  money  brings  its  perils,  and  in 
America  lack  of  money  is  the  easiest  of  all  obstacles 
to  surmount  and  remove. 

The  chief  real  drawback  of  farm  life  in  those  days  Chief 
lay  in  the  prevalence  of  infectious  diseases,  against  draw~ 
which  parents  had  no  way  of  guarding  the  children. 
Mary  and  I  went  through  diphtheria  together,  after- 
ward scarlet  fever,  and  later  measles.  No  one  then 
knew  how  to  treat  these  maladies  and  many  children 
died,  as  we  came  near  doing.  Fortunately,  however, 
we  were  attended  by  a  capable  physician  of  the  old 
school,  Dr.  Zurhorst,1  a  bluff  Englishman  of  kind 
heart  and  crusty  manner,  but  ignorant,  like  every 
one  else,  as  to  the  real  nature  of  the  plagues  which 
ravaged  our  country  communities,  for  bacteria  were 
at  that  time  still  undiscovered. 

Outside  the  house  things  were  not  always  to  my  Farm 
taste,  and  for  some  phases  of  farm  work  I  had  a  work 
distinct   dislike.     My   father   at   sixty,   as   I   once 
remarked,  "could  still  do  a  bigger  day's  work  than 
he  ever  got  out  of  me."    I  never  loved  to  stow  away 
hay,   hoe  potatoes,   milk  cows,  or  pile  up   stones. 
Nevertheless,  I  did  enjoy  using  the  cradle  to  cut  a 
good  field  of  wheat,  I  liked  clearing  up  brushy  land, 
and    I   was   intensely   interested   in   the   care   and 
breeding  of  sheep. 

1  Pronounced  "Zirst."  Similar  eccentricities  were  universal  among  our 
English  neighbors;  thus  Kershaw  was  "Cassia,"  Sherwood  "Shuard,"  Gillespie 
"Glasby." 

c  41.3 


The  Days  of  a  Man  1:1864 

Love  In  1862  Rufus  bought  a  flock  of  about  thirty 
of  Dorset  lambs  of  high  grade.  Leaving  for  the  war 
sheep  immediately  afterward,  he  asked  me  (then  eleven 
years  old)  to  take  care  of  the  beasts,  a  duty  I  as- 
sumed with  great  enthusiasm.  In  time  I  had  tamed 
the  whole  flock  so  that  they  would  not  merely  eat 
out  of  my  hand  but  follow  me  everywhere,  and  to 
each  I  gave  a  name.  Drawing  partly  from  my 
nascent  knowledge  of  French,  I  christened  them 
"Honnete"  "La  Noblesse,"  "La  Paresse,"  "Daran- 
court"  "  Caulaincourt"  as  well  as  "Columbiana," 
"Wild  Gazelle,"  "Black  Gazelle,"  and  the  like.  For 
ten  years  —  that  is,  until  I  left  college  —  I  sheared 
the  whole  flock  every  year,  and  faithfully  kept  a 
record  of  the  amount  of  wool  furnished  by  each  one. 
Father  in  the  meantime  had  bought  a  number  of 
Paular  merinos,  a  breed  with  very  fine  wool.  But 
merinos  are  not  immune  to  hoofrot,  an  infection 
then  current  and  easily  transmitted  from  one  sheep 
to  another  by  simple  contact  with  the  grass  over 
which  an  infected  animal  has  trodden.  To  this 
disease  the  Dorsets  are  practically  resistant. 
Hoofrot  In  a  youthful  way  I  really  gave  considerable 
in  attention  to  the  care  of  our  flocks,  and  the  first 
**  scientific  paper  I  ever  published  (Prairie  Farmer, 
1871)  was  a  discussion  of  "Hoofrot  in  Sheep."  In  it 
I  described  the  pathology  of  the  infection  which 
separates  the  layers  of  the  hoof,  causing  the  member 
to  become  swollen  and  feverish,  thus  making  the 
animal  hopelessly  lame.  To  my  mind  the  so-called 
virus  behaved  like  a  living  thing,  its  "seed"  trans- 
ferable by  contact.  Such  was  indeed  the  case. 
Every  virus  is  a  living  thing,  an  aggregation  of 
microbes,  though  no  one  had  so  far  demonstrated 


1864]  Care  for  Sheep 

that  fact.  The  particular  germ  of  hoofrot,  moreover, 
was  long  unknown,  but  I  am  told  that  recent  studies 
have  shown  it  to  be  a  pus-forming  Streptococcus — S. 
pyogenes  —  akin  to  the  forms  which  cause  nasal 
troubles  in  man;  with  a  good  microscope  I  might 
perhaps  have  made  important  discoveries. 

Carbolic  acid  being  at  that  time  unknown,  tar  Caustic 
was  my  only  available  antiseptic.    But  for  permanent  remedies 
cure  I  was  forced  to  fall  back  on  caustics:    first, 
nitrate  of  silver,  which  proved  too  expensive,  next, 
chloride  of  antimony  —  harsh,  but  fairly  effective  - 
and,  finally,  a  shallow  hot  solution  of  sulphate  of 
copper  (blue  vitriol),  which  was  probably  the  best. 
In  a  bath  of  this  last  we  stood  the  sheep,  with  hoofs 
properly  trimmed,  until  their  feet  were  saturated.1 

In  1864  I  bought  on  my  own  account  one  hundred 
badly  infected  animals.  These  I  succeeded  in  cur- 
ing, but  the  sudden  ending  of  the  war  brought  down 
the  price  of  wool  from  one  dollar  to  thirty  cents  a 
pound,  so  that  my  new  flock  was  carried  through 
the  winter  at  a  loss.  Accordingly,  when  spring  Peddling 
came,  I  selected  the  least  desirable  and  drove  them  sbffp 
across  the  country,  selling  them  one  by  one  where  I 
could.  Some,  being  very  tame,  went  as  cossets  or 
family  pets.  The  best  Dorset  and  Paular  ewes  I 
retained  for  friendship's  sake,  a  few  of  them  until 
they  were  ten  years  old  and  I  had  left  college,  the 
farm  having  been  meanwhile  transformed  into  a 
dairy. 

1  Nitrate  of  silver  I  found  to  be  the  remedial  agent  in  a  secret  cure  which 
my  father  bought  to  try  out.  It  contained  also  alkanet  and  oil  of  sassafras, 
both  introduced  to  mask  its  character,  the  one  being  a  red  dye,  the  other  lending 
a  pleasant  but  deceptive  fragrance.  Chloride  or  butyr  (butter)  of  antimony 
was  then  already  in  use  among  sheep  raisers.  Blue  vitriol  had  been  recom- 
mended by  the  well-known  sheep  breeder,  Henry  C.  Randall. 


The  Days  of  a  Man  £1865 

Clearing  Other  tasks,  not  uncongenial  but  more  laborious 
swamps  than  the  care  and  breeding  of  sheep,  fell  at  times  to 
my  lot.  On  the  farm  were  a  number  of  small  spring- 
fed  swamps  unavailable  for  cultivation  until  they 
were  drained.  In  them  the  common  timber  was  the 
black  ash,  interspersed  with  occasional  thickets  of 
aspen  on  the  drier  places.  One  of  my  duties  was  to 
cut  down  and  burn  the  trees  and  brush  preparatory 
to  drainage.  In  the  outlets  of  some  of  the  swamps  I 
found  the  bog  ore  of  iron,  but  no  use  has  ever  been 
made  of  it. 

Boiling  The  making  of  sugar  from  the  sweet  sap  of  the 
saP  sugar  maple  —  Acer  saccharum  —  is  a  regular  yearly 
matter  in  our  part  of  New  York.  The  flow  com- 
mences with  the  melting  of  snow  in  March  and 
continues  until  the  leaves  begin  to  expand,  at  which 
time  the  sap  takes  on  a  bitter  flavor.  Our  grove 
was  a  small  but  very  good  one.  The  spring  I  was 
fourteen,  it  was  turned  over  to  me,  and  I  myself 
tapped  the  trees,  gathered  the  liquid,  boiled  it 
down,  and  made  the  sugar. 

Apple  I  was  also  much  interested  in  our  apple  orchard. 
culture  Around  the  house  stood  a  number  of  large  and  fine 
old  trees.  In  my  childhood  Father  extended  this 
orchard  up  the  steep  moraine  bounding  the  bull- 
head pond.  At  about  the  age  of  ten  I  used  to  record 
regularly  the  number  and  kind  of  apples  on  each  of 
the  young  trees  he  had  added.  Afterward  he  and 
I  together  planted  a  row  in  alternate  angles  of 
the  zigzag  rail  fence  bounding  the  farm  on  the 
south. 

I  must,  however,  confess  that  neither  physically 
nor  intellectually  did  I  ever  exert  myself  to  the  limit 
of  possible  effort.  Yet  in  college  it  was  commonly 

C  44  3 


DAVID  STARR  JORDAN,  AUGUST,   1 868 


i868]  Methods  of  Study 

said  that  I  got  more  done  than  any  other  two  men, 
though  I  "never  seemed  to  be  busy."  The  truth  is, 
I  learned  very  early  to  do  my  formal  work  in  the 
shortest  possible  time  and  to  keep  always  ahead  of 
the  class.  Unfortunately  I  was  always  far-sighted, 
and  though  my  vision  in  general  was  phenomenally  si&bted 
good,  it  really  involved  eyestrains  not  realized  for  eyes 
many  years,  but  a  serious  drawback  at  forty.  After 
I  left  college,  bookwork  by  artificial  light  became 
more  and  more  trying,  so  that  from  the  age  of  thirty- 
five  on  I  have  been  practically  debarred  from  using 
my  eyes  for  night  study.  Indeed,  for  more  than 
thirty  years  my  wife  has  helped  me  out  by  reading 
aloud  in  the  evenings,  and  still  more  by  critical  and 
constructive  work  on  manuscripts  I  have  not  been 
able  properly  to  revise.  Such  limitations  are  partly 
responsible  for  my  ability  to  skim  ordinary  English 
and  French  books  a  page  at  a  time  and  still  get  their 
substance.  (With  German  I  never  had  the  same 
success,  but  the  fault  lies  with  its  syntax  and  not 
with  me!)  At  the  same  time,  although  my  reading 
has  been  very  wide  both  in  science  and  in  modern 
history,  narrower  limits  than  I  could  have  wished 
have  been  set  upon  it.  I  am  therefore  thankful  for 
every  piece  of  intensive  study,  in  whatever  line, 
which  I  made  before  executive  responsibilities  were 
thrown  on  me. 

During  all  my  life  my  strongest  mental  power  has  Memory 
been  the  ability  to  recall  clear  pictures  of  what  I 
have  seen.  I  rarely  forget  a  landscape,  an  animal, 
or  a  flower,  though  among  men  I  remember  names 
better  than  faces.  The  world  I  live  in  is  a  world 
of  details  rather  than  of  generalizations  —  which 

C4S3 


The  Days  of  a  Man  £1868 

Nature  is  said  to  discredit  even  as  she  "abhors"  a 

vacuum. 

Eager         I   think   the   word   "eager"   best   described   my 
but .       temperament  as  a  boy.     Indeed,  I  cannot  recall  a 

patient  -IT  r  i_* 

moment  since  when  I  was  not  eager  for  something. 
Nevertheless,  this  quality  has  been  always  more  or 
less  obscured  by  a  shield  of  optimism  which  friends 
call  "poise,"  and  toward  which  my  stature  has  no 
doubt  contributed.  In  early  life  I  became  accustomed 
to  work  persistently  toward  desired  ends  and  then 
take  the  upshot  calmly.  Moreover,  I  never  worry 
over  a  mischance,  once  it  is  past.  In  some  degree 
the  two  traits,  eagerness  and  a  sort  of  patient  opti- 
mism, though  seemingly  contradictory,  have  always 
gone  together  in  my  make-up.  I  recognize  also  two 
other  tendencies  in  lifelong  competition.  From  my 
father  I  inherited  a  disposition  to  proclaim  even 
from  the  housetops  any  fixed  opinion,  especially 
if  unpopular.  From  my  mother  I  have  the  impulse 
quietly  to  ignore  differences  when  nothing  is  to  be 
gained  by  outcry. 


Religion  At  about  the  time  of  their  marriage  my  parents 
left  the  Baptist  church  because  of  their  doubts  as 
to  "eternal  damnation,"  a  leading  tenet  in  those 
days.  Ultimately,  as  already  implied,  they  joined 
the  Universalists.  I  was  therefore  brought  up  under 
strong  religious  influences  untouched  by  conven- 
tional orthodoxy.  My  father  kept  abreast  of  the 
writings  (in  part  controversial)  of  Theodore  Parker, 
William  Ellery  Channing,  James  Freeman  Clarke, 
Thomas  Starr  King,  and  their  followers.  I  myself 

C463 


1867]  The  Puritan  Conscience 

early  acquired  a  dislike  for  theological  discussion,  be- 
lieving that  it  dealt  mostly  with  unrealities  negligible 
in  the  conduct  of  life.  Consequently  I  never  had  to 
pass  through  a  painful  transition  while  acquiring  the 
broader  outlook  of  science  and  literature. 

But  both  my  parents  had  the  Puritan  conscience 
and  were  very  rigid  as  to  personal  conduct,  depre- 
cating all  forms  of  idleness  and  dissipation  generally. 
We  children  naturally  developed  a  similar  attitude, 
I  suppose  because  we  were  "  built  that  way." 

The  fact  that  other  boys  were  doing  any  particular  Personal 
thing  had  not  the  slightest  influence  with  me.    My  morals 
father,  as  I  have  said,  and  my  brother  Rufus  also, 
did  not  smoke  or  use  alcohol  in  any  form.    I  myself 
never  even  once  tried  to  smoke.     My  only  lapse  in 
this  regard  was  in  taking  a  single  whiff  of  the  Pipe 
of  Peace  or  Calumet  passed  from  the  senior  to  the 
junior  class  at  Cornell  in  1872.     Many  years  ago  I 
formulated  my  views  on  smoking  as  "Three  Counts 
against  Tobacco": 

First,  nicotine,  the  essential   content  of  tobacco,  Counts 
is  a  deadly  poison,  acting  —  in   small  quantities  —  against 
as  a  nerve  irritant  under  the  guise  of  a  sedative.    Any  tobacco 
drug,  however,  which  affects  the  nerves  tends  to  put 
them  out  of  order,  thus  deranging  the  most  delicate 
of   all    machinery.      Second,    nicotine    retards    the 
development    of   the    growing    boy,    and    weakens 
virility.    Third,  the  tobacco  habit  begets  a  lack  of 
consideration  for  the  rights  of  others,  pollutes  the 
air,  and  causes  much  discomfort  to  those  not  hardened 
to  it.    Furthermore,  to  be  hardened  is  not  a  sign  of 
strength,  but  rather  an  indication  of  loss  of  sensi- 
tiveness on   the   part   of  nerves  which   should   be 
delicately   alert.     The   advice   given   by   Professor 

C47  3 


The  Days  of  a  Man  £1867 

George  F.  Swain  of  Harvard  to  his  graduates  in 
Civil  Engineering,  "Let  your  competitors  smoke/' 
seems  to  me  good  sense. 

Attitude  In  the  matter  of  alcohol  my  theory  has  been  as 
toward  j-jgid  as  my  practice.  Accepting  the  validity  of 
alcohol  conventjonai  temperance  arguments  drawn  from 
physiology  and  the  need  of  social  sanitation,  I  press 
the  case  still  farther.  The  sole  purpose  of  alcoholic 
drinks  is  to  force  the  nervous  system  to  lie,  and  thus 
to  vitiate  its  power  of  recording  the  truth.  Men  use 
alcohol,  weak  or  strong,  to  feel  warm  when  they  are 
really  cold,  to  "feel  good"  without  warrant,  to  feel 
emancipated  from  those  restraints  and  reserves 
which  constitute  the  essence  of  character  building. 
Alcohol  is  a  depressant,  not  a  stimulant,  appearing 
as  such  only  because  it  affects  the  highest  nerve- 
operations  first. 

Its  influence  impinges  alike  on  the  three  chief 
mental  functions,  sensation,  reason,  motion.  It 
leaves  its  subject  uncertain  as  to  what  he  sees  or 
feels,  hazy  as  to  cause  and  effect,  and  unsteady  as 
to  resultant  action.  No  man  of  high  purpose  can 
afford  to  endanger  the  validity  of  these  nerve 
processes  which  register  his  contact  with  reality. 
Cards  As  to  cards,  in  deference  to  my  mother's  wish  and 
because  of  my  own  conviction,  I  never  touched  them 
until  after  leaving  college.  With  me  personally  it 
was  not  a  question  of  right  and  wrong  but  a  saving 
of  valuable  time  for  better  things  —  study,  athletics, 
and  outings. 

In  my  sixteenth  year  Mr.  Jenkins  preached  a 
sermon  on  the  need  of  man  for  a  divine  revelation. 
To  this  discourse  I  remember  listening  with  what 

C48  3 


1867]  Religious  Revivals 

I  thought  an  open  mind  and  at  the  end  concluding 
that  the  case  was  not  proved.  Earlier  (at  about  the  "A  prayer 
age  of  eight)  I  had  made  some  tests  of  prayer.  When 
a  toy  boat  I  had  built  became  entangled  on  the  pond 
in  the  crotch  of  a  log  from  which  only  a  north  wind 
could  release  it,  I  prayed  for  a  north  wind ;  by  morn- 
ing the  boat  had  arrived  in  port.  I  was  thus  en- 
couraged to  petition,  although  unsuccessfully,  for 
some  things  I  knew  I  ought  not  to  have. 

With  other  youths  of  that  time  I  was  exposed  to  Religion 
the  peculiar  institution  known  as  the  "revival."  and 
In  western  New  York  the  Methodist  Episcopal  bystena 
Church  had  been  split  by  the  secession  of  a  group 
called  Free  Methodists  or  "Nazarites,"  who  be- 
lieved in  intense  emotionalism  and  the  need  of  a 
spasmodic  transformation  to  "a  state  of  grace." 
One  of  them,  a  famous  evangelist  named  Gilbert 
Delamatyr,  painted  the  horrors  of  hell  in  vivid  colors 
and  scorching  language ;  in  his  way  he  was  an  orator, 
not  a  clown,  as  some  later  exhorters  have  been. 
The  general  effect  of  his  discourses  was  to  create  in 
believers  a  violent  nervous  disturbance  so  that  some 
rolled  on  the  floor,  shouting  incoherently.  The  re- 
action which  followed  when  the  blood-flow  became 
relatively  calm  again  was  taken  as  a  "new  birth"  and 
pledge  of  salvation.  Often,  however,  the  results  of 
these  emotional  spasms  were  distinctly  mischievous 
as  to  both  sanity  of  life  and  personal  morals. 

At  such  meetings  I  was  never  moved.  But  the 
Congregational  Church  undertaking  in  its  cool  way 
what  it  also  called  a  revival,  I  rose  and  went  forward 
with  the  others  looking  for  "conversion."  I  was 
sincere  enough  in  this  matter,  but  it  made  no  real 
difference  in  my  life  so  far  as  I  remember,  and  was 

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The  Days  of  a  Man  £1870 

accompanied  by  no  special  "conviction  of  sin."  As 
an  irresponsible  boy  I  certainly  did  foolish  and 
selfish  things  at  times,  —  I  have  often  done  them 
since,  —  but  I  was  never  malicious  and  never  in- 
tentionally interfered  with  the  rights  of  others.  In 
any  event,  the  quiet  personal  influence  of  Mr. 
Jenkins  was  far  more  effective  for  sound  living  and 
religious  development  than  any  emotional  impulse 
derived  from  his  preaching. 

Camp  Revivals  were  often  held  in  connection  with  reli- 
gious  outings  in  the  woods,  lasting  several  days  and 
known  as  "camp  meetings."  Once  during  my  Cornell 
course  a  number  of  us  walked  over  from  Ithaca  to  a 
gathering  on  Seneca  Lake.  There  we  were  welcomed 
as  brands  to  be  snatched  from  a  godless  institution, 
and  were  assigned  a  place  to  sleep  in  a  "gospel 
tent"  at  the  other  end  of  which  a  prayer  meeting 
was  going  on.  One  brother  praying  vociferously, 
"O  Lord,  come  down  and  crack  our  shells!"  —  mean- 
ing break  down  reserve  —  Melville  Anderson  (a 
minister's  son,  by  the  way)  called  out  a  little  too 
loudly:  "There  is  a  fellow  over  there  who  wants 
his  shell  cracked!" 


C  503 


CHAPTER  THREE 


As  I  have  said,  the  accident  at  Warsaw  changed  my  winning  a 
previous  plans.  Up  to  that  time  I  had  been  prepar-  Cornell 
ing,  though  somewhat  vaguely,  to  enter  Yale  College  scbolarsbt* 
(as  it  was  then  known)  at  New  Haven.  Meanwhile, 
however,  Cornell  had  been  founded,  free  scholar- 
ships were  offered,  —  one  in  each  of  the  Assembly 
districts  of  the  state,  —  and  a  competitive  exami- 
nation for  the  Wyoming  County  scholarship  was 
accordingly  held  at  Warsaw.  Leaving  one  of  the 
older  boys  temporarily  in  charge  of  my  now  subdued 
school,  I  went  and  took  the  test.  Three  other 
candidates  appeared,  two  of  them  already  in  college 
—  one  a  Cornell  senior,  in  fact.  I  was  successful, 
however,  and  having  duly  received  my  appointment,1 
in  March,  1869,  I  entered  the  new  university  with 
only  seventy-five  dollars  in  my  pocket,  but  rich  in 
hope  and  ambitions.  Those  prerogatives  of  youth 
were  not  to  betray  me,  for  I  was  able  to  pay  practi- 
cally all  my  way  through  college  —  mainly  by 
botanical  work  and  by  instruction  in  botany  —  and 
at  graduation  I  again  faced  the  world  with  seventy- 
five  dollars.  Meanwhile  I  had  made  a  point  of 
asking  my  parents  for  little  except  apples  and  the 
like,  for  with  the  end  of  the  war  father  had  lost 
considerable  money  carrying  over  sheep  and  some 

1  With  youthful  naivete,  writing  ahead  to  the  registrar  to  make  the  necessary 
arrangements  for  entrance,  I  explained  that  I  was  eighteen  years  old,  six  feet 
tall,  and  weighed  180  pounds!  At  that  time  I  was  a  strong,  muscular,  though 
sparely  built  and  somewhat  round-shouldered,  young  fellow,  a  good  athlete, 
as  I  have  elsewhere  said,  especially  in  sprinting  and  high  jumping. 


The  Days  of  a  Man  [1869 

other  interests  which  fell  suddenly  in  nominal  value 
—  debts,  however,  remaining  undiminished. 

Arriving  at  Ithaca,  I  put  up  for  one  night  at  the 
Clinton  House,  —  the  first  real  hotel  I  had  ever 
visited,  —  which  impressed  me  as  both  luxurious 
and  convenient.  Next  day,,  with  a  companion,  I 
took  a  room  on  Linn  Street  at  the  foot  of  the  Uni- 
versity  Hill.  Here  I  got  my  first  job,  that  of  nailing 
onis  lath  on  a  neighboring  house.  Not  long  after  I 
removed  to  Cascadilla  Place,  a  huge  stone  edifice, 
formerly  a  sanitarium,  then  transformed  into  a 
dormitory  for  professors  and  students.  At  Cascadilla 
I  paid  my  way  by  waiting  on  the  table,  a  service 
mostly  undertaken  by  the  boys.  In  this  art  I 
acquired  some  dexterity;  but  as  a  whole  it  was  the 
most  distasteful  form  of  work  I  ever  tried,  a  fact 
which  gave  special  zest  to  all  my  later  experiments 
in  earning  money.  The  following  autumn  I  moved 
to  a  two-story  frame  building  owned  (and  put  up) 
by  students  in  what  was  at  that  time  called  "  Uni- 
versity Grove/'  a  little  thicket  just  behind  the  spot 
afterward  chosen  for  President  White's  residence, 
the  first  of  a  long  series  of  professors'  homes. 
"The  Establishing  ourselves  in  "the  Grove,"  we  at 
Grove"  once  formed  a  boarding  club,  first  in  the  little 
Tthe  farmhouse  which  was  then  the  center  of  the  Col- 
lege  of  Agriculture,  later  at  the  Grove  itself.  This 
impecunious  table  venture  was  known  in  the  early 
days  as  "the  Struggle  for  Existence,"  familiarly 
"the  Strug."  The  range  of  fare  was  not  wide,  but 
our  scanty  earnings,  mainly  derived  from  digging 
ditches  and  husking  corn,  scarcely  warranted  high 
living.  Nevertheless,  on  the  door  I  twice  posted 

ITS*  3 


1870]     "The  Struggle  for  Existence" 

remonstrant  verses  signed  Nihil,1  bewailing  our 
steward's  dependence  in  the  one  case  on  parsnips, 
in  the  other  on  graham  mush. 

One  of  my  rebellious  outbursts  has  been  lately  re- 
vived by  an  indiscreet  friend.  Had  I  expected  the 
verses  to  survive  beyond  the  empty  condition  which 
provoked  them,  I  should  have  tried  to  do  better: 

Once  we  were  blithe  and  gay, 
Sang  like  a  bird  all  day, 
Fed  on  hot  muffin; 
Turkeys  our  table  graced, 
Oysters  appeased  our  taste 
Served  up  as  stuffing. 

O  for  a  biscuit  white, 
Such  as  our  sisters  bake! 
O  for  the  doughnut  light, 
Such  as  our  mothers  make! 
Even  a  wedding  cake, 
That  were  variety! 

But  no,  'tis  graham  bread, 
Beans,  peas,  and  graham  bread, 
Parsnips  and  graham  bread, 
Larup  and  graham  bread,  — 
So,  till  we're  gray  and  dead, 
Dead  from  Satiety! 

The  leading  spirit  in  the  management  of  the  house 
was  Roswell  Leavitt,  a  student  from  Maine,  con-  Lcatitt 
siderably  older  than  the  rest  of  us,  —  in  fact,  quite 
aged  in  our  eyes,  —  extremely  clever  in  literary 
ways  but  at  the  same  time  always  behind  in  his 
studies  and  never  learning  what  to  me  was  a  very 
important  lesson  of  college  discipline,  the  value  of 
time  and  the  necessity  of  getting  things  done  before 

1  "Nihil  fit!  Fellow  citizens,  let  us  give  three  cheers  for  Nihil,  the  man 
who  fit.  He  wasn't  a  strategy  feller!"  JOSH  BILLINGS 

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The  Days  of  a  Man  £1870 

they  are  wanted.    At  the  Grove  we  met  weekly  for 

The         what  we  jestingly  called  a  "Soiree  litteraife";    on 

"Soiree  ^  these  occasions  the  record  of  the  past  week's  doings 

htteraire    wag   reac^   an(j   selections   from   current   stories  or 

verse    were    presented    by    the    various    members. 

Once  I  ventured  on  some  character  studies  in  which 

Leavitt  was  pictured  as  "a  tall  pine  of  Aroostook" 

(the  county  in  Maine  from  which  we  assumed  he 

came)  in  the  upper  branches  of  which  the  winds 

sighed  and  sang.    He  retorted  with  the  following: 

A  withered  pine  that's  only  green  at  top, 
Given  half  in  scorn,  the  other  half  in  jest; 
The  emblem  suits  me,  let  the  insult  drop  — 
"In  hoc  spe  vivo;"  I  accept  the  rest. 

"The  My  first  roommate  at  Cornell  was  a  young  en- 

thusiast,  a  wild-haired  and  original  character,  Isaac 
Newman  Lounsbury  Heroy,  afterward  a  conspicuous 
Methodist  preacher  in  Orange  County  (New  York). 
After  the  first  year,  I  shared  a  room  with  William 
Russell  Dudley,  a  lad  from  North  Guilford,  Connecti- 
cut, who  came  with  a  letter  introducing  him  as  a 
young  botanist  in  whom  I  would  be  interested. 
For  although  still  an  undergraduate,  I  had  already 
been  made  instructor  in  Botany.  It  was  in  that 
year  (1870),  I  believe,  that  the  title  "instructor" 
was  first  used  in  a  university  definitely  to  denote  a 
teacher  of  lower  grade  than  assistant  professor. 
Before  me,  Theodore  B.  Comstock,  since  noted  as  a 
mining  engineer,  had  -occupied  a  similar  position; 
and  two  others,  John  Henry  Comstock  in  Ento- 
mology, and  Oliver  H.  P.  Cornell  in  Chemistry,  were 
later  appointed  instructors,  so  that  the  rank  became 
definitely  established. 

C  543 


1870]          William  Russell  Dudley 

Dudley,  a  devoted  lover  of  flowers  and  possessed  A 
of  fine  literary  taste  and  ability,  was  also  one  of 
the  noblest  and  purest  youths  I  have  ever  known. 
His  unfailing  courtesy  and  absolute  sense  of  justice 
endeared  him  to  all.  Our  mutual  friendship  was 
lasting  and  intimate.  During  my  instructorship  he 
gathered  the  plants  for  class  use,  and  together  we 
roamed  over  all  the  hills  and  to  all  the  waterfalls 
within  thirty  miles  of  Ithaca,  on  both  Cayuga  and 
Seneca  lakes.  A  list  of  the  plants  of  the  lake  region, 
begun  by  me,  was  afterward  completed  and  published 
by  him.  Upon  my  graduation  in  1872  he  took  my 
place,  afterward  becoming  assistant  professor  in  the 
department.  In  1891  he  was  chosen  as  professor  of 
Systematic  Botany  in  the  newly  organized  Stanford 
University,  a  position  he  held  from  1892  to  1909. 
He  then  retired  on  a  Carnegie  pension  and  died  not 
long  after.1 

His  successful  career  as  a  teacher  and  student  of 
Botany  and  Forestry  may  have  surprised  his  practical 
father,  who  once  expressed  some  skepticism  as  to 
the  value  of  a  love  of  flowers.  During  a  visit  I  paid 
to  the  family  home  in  the  summer  of  1871,*  Mr. 
Dudley  said  to  me:  " There  comes  Willie  across  the 
fields  with  his  hands  full  of  flowers.  I  wonder  if  he 
can  ever  make  anything  out  of  that." 

Equally  closely  associated  with  me  was  another 
young  botanist  in  my  own  class,  Herbert  Edson 
Copeland  from  Monroe,  Wisconsin.  Copeiand  was 

1  For  further  reference,  see  Chapter  xvm,  page  440. 

2  While  in  Connecticut  at  that  time  I  had  an  opportunity  of  visiting  Yale, 
and  also  of  going  out  to  East  Rock,  where  the  three  "  Regicides,"  —  judges 
who  condemned  Charles  I,  —  Goff,  Whalley,  and  Dixwell,  lived  for  a  time 
in  1649  under  a  sheltering  boulder.     On  this  they  carved  the  words,  "Oposi- 
tion  to  tyrants  is  obedience  to  God,"  using  but  one  "  p  "  for  economy's  sake. 

CSS  3 


The  Days  of  a  Man  1:1872 

a  wiry,  dark,  athletic,  tremendously  enthusiastic 
fellow,  a  surprisingly  able  writer,  with  a  touch  of 
Emerson's  quality  and  especially  of  Thoreau's. 
He  was  also  an  eloquent  and  fiery  speaker.  Of  all 
the  young  students  of  science  I  have  ever  known  he, 
I  think,  showed  the  greatest  promise,  not  only  for 
intensive  and  original  work  but  for  versatility  and 
broad-minded  interest  in  public  affairs  as  well.  For 
a  long  time  he  was  said  to  have  been  Cornell's  best 
student  in  both  English  and  Latin,  as  well  as  one 
of  the  very  best  in  science.  A  sentence  out  of  his 
earnest  address  as  Commencement  orator  in  1872 
clings  in  my  memory,  "I  am  proud  of  but  one 
Copeland,  a  negro  who  died  at  Harper's  Ferry, 
with  John  Brown." 

An  account  of  our  later  cooperation  in  scientific 
research  and  reference  to  his  untimely  death  will  be 
found  in  a  subsequent  chapter. 


"Brothers  My  friendship  for  Dudley  and  Copeland  was 
in  t  cemented  and  extended  when,  with  William  A. 
Kellerman,  another  young  botanist,  we  joined  the 
recently  organized  Cornell  Chapter  of  "Delta 
Upsilon,"  of  which  three  other  good  friends,  John 
Henry  Comstock,  John  Casper  Branner,  and  Jared 
T.  Newman,  were  already  members.  For  our  personal 
aspirations  were  in  harmony  with  theirs  as  well  as 
with  the  avowed  purposes  of  the  fraternity  itself. 

Delta  Upsilon  had  been  founded  at  Union  College, 
Schenectady,  back  in  the  '40'$.  Established  origi- 
nally as  a  non-secret  society,  it  sometimes  even 
admitted  outsiders  to  its  meetings;  and  its  motto, 

C  563 


JOHN  HENRY  COMSTOCK        ANNA  BOTSFORD  COMSTOCK 


MELVILLE  BEST  ANDERSON        WILLIAM  RUSSEL  DUDLEY 


1872]  Delta   Up  si  Ion 

"  Ai/ccua  vTTo0T]K7) "  —  "right  foundation"  — was  held 
to  have  no  importance  beyond  the  expression  of  an 
ideal,  although  the  Greek  initials  of  other  fraternities 
supposedly  covered  some  secret.  As  a  group,  Delta 
Upsilon  was  opposed  to  secrecy  as  well  as  to  carousing, 
and  condemned  the  nocturnal  tricks  which  were  so 
prominent  a  feature  of  college  life  in  those  days  of 
prescribed  courses,  when  studies  and  professors  were 
regarded  as  enemies  by  the  "reluctant  student." 

My  relations  with  the  local  chapter  were  extremely 
helpful.  With  scarcely  an  exception  the  members 
were  youths  of  fine  personality  and  wholesome 
influence.  We  stood  at  that  time  as  the  center  of 
the  "independent"  or  "non-fraternity"  group;  rep- 
resenting this  element,  I  was  elected  class  president 
at  the  end  of  my  junior  year.  In  many  institutions 
Delta  Upsilon  had  been  rather  the  rallying  point  for 
students  intending  to  be  clergymen  or  professors. 
At  Cornell  it  took  a  scientific  turn,  and  we  three 
botanists  joined  it,  as  I  have  said,  because  of  our 
liking  for  others  of  our  kind.1 

Comstock,  —  "John  Henry"  we  called  him, — who  had  a  The 
good  deal  of  skill  in  the  ringing  of  bells,  first  paid  his  way  as  Comstocks 
Master  of  the  Chimes  and  later  as  assistant  to  Dr.  Wilder  in 
Zoology.  In  his  tireless  enthusiasm  for  Entomology,  he  gave 
special  lessons  to  a  group  of  three  or  four,  Copeland  and  my- 
self among  the  number.  Afterwards  thirteen  of  us  sent  a 
petition  to  the  faculty  asking  that  those  private  lessons  be 
recognized  as  university  work.  Our  request  being  granted, 
Comstock  was  made  instructor  in  Entomology,  from  which 
position  he  rose  in  time  to  be  professor.  He  became,  more- 
over, the  recognized  leader  in  his  branch,  and  under  him  al- 

1  In  this  work  the  author  has  considered  it  desirable  to  set  in  small 
type  several  sections  mainly  of  technical  or  personal  interest.  These  are 
distinguished  from  extracts  or  quotations  in  the  same  type  by  a  short  line 
at  the  beginning  and  the  end. 

CS73 


The  Days  of  a  Man  £1870 

most  every  younger  entomologist  of  standing  in  the  country 
has  at  some  time  or  other  studied. 

He  married  Anna  Botsford,  a  Cornell  graduate  of  later 
days,  an  artist  and  a  naturalist  especially  interested  in  insects. 
Mrs.  Comstock's  big  heart  and  genial  nature,  varied  acquaint- 
ance, and  sympathy  with  young  people  have  made  their  home 
a  center  of  student  life  for  upwards  of  forty  years.  Her  fine 
and  accurate  work  in  the  illustration  of  her  own  and  her  hus- 
band's books  commands  the  admiration  of  naturalists,  and  her 
efforts  in  recent  years  for  the  promotion  of  nature  study  in 
the  lower  schools  of  New  York  State  have  been  very  success- 
ful. The  devoted  friendship  of  both  the  Comstocks  is  one  of 
our  joys  in  life. 

Branner  Branner,  a  big,  broad-shouldered,  enthusiastic,  jolly-tempered 
and  the  youth  with  a  fine  wit,  a  most  delightful  story  teller,  from 
others  Dandridge  in  eastern  Tennessee,  we  hailed  as  "king  of  the 
wassail  and  jack  of  the  rebels."  He  came  to  college  with  the 
intention  to  enter  the  Presbyterian  ministry.  Science,  how- 
ever, as  events  have  plainly  proved,  was  his  proper  field,  and 
he  turned  definitely  to  Geology,  in  which  subject  he  became  in 
time  a  leading  world  authority.  But  of  him,  my  lifelong  friend, 
my  colleague  also  for  more  than  a  quarter-century,  I  shall 
have  frequent  occasion  to  speak.  Mrs.  Branner,  whom  we 
have  also  long  held  in  warm  affection,  is  a  graduate  of  Vassar 
and  sister  of  Horace  Kennedy,  one  of  our  favorite  "brothers." 

A  forceful  member  of  the  science  group  in  Delta  Upsilon 
and  also  of  "the  Strug"  was  Edward  Leamington  Nichols,  a 
rosy-cheeked  boy  of  excellent  caliber,  afterwards  for  more 
than  a  quarter  of  a  century  head  professor  of  Physics  at  Cornell. 

Another  "youngster  of  excellent  pith"  was  Herman  L. 
Fairchild,  geologist,  now  for  thirty  years  or  more  professor  in 
the  University  of  Rochester.1 

Among  others  not  scientifically  inclined  but  much  beloved 
were  Newman,  already  mentioned,  afterward  an  attorney  in 
Ithaca  and  for  many  years  also  a  member  of  the  university 
board  of  trustees;  John  Manley  Chase,  a  youth  of  rare  per- 

1  Members  of  the  local  chapter  of  Delta  Upsilon  who  became  eminent  in 
science,  but  who  entered  Cornell  after  I  left,  were  Simon  Henry  Gage,  physi- 
ologist; William  Trelease,  botanist;  Leland  O.  Howard,  entomologist;  and 
Theobald  Smith,  bacteriologist. 

C  58  3 


1870]  Fraternity  Brothers 

sonal  charm,  now  in  business  in  San  Francisco;  Caleb  Dexter 
Page,  from  the  lumber  woods  of  Michigan,  —  a  delightful 
singer, — who  also  went  into  business;  and  Milton  Campbell 
Johnston,  before  and  since  a  sturdy  farmer  of  Otsego  County. 

In  the  fraternity  group  of  my  day  we  counted  also  a  couple 
of  boys  from  overseas.  One  was  a  young  Russian  engineer  of 
unusual  ability  by  the  name  of  Dobroluboff,  familiarly  known 
as  "Double  up  and  roll  off,"  which  then  seemed  a  picturesque 
transliteration!  In  1876,  after  his  first  return  home,  he  came 
back  to  America  in  connection  with  the  Russian  exhibit  at  the 
Philadelphia  Centennial  Exposition.  Later  he  fell  into  politi- 
cal disfavor,  and  the  Cornell  Ten  Year  Book  prints  after  his 
name  the  grim  phrase,  "Executed  for  Nihilism  in  1880." 

The  other  alien,  a  delight  to  us  all,  was  Riokichi  Yatabe,  a 
brilliant  Japanese  who  became  professor  in  the  Imperial  Uni- 
versity of  Tokyo,  and  later  head  of  the  first  Japanese  Normal 
School.  Some  years  afterwards  he  was  drowned  in  the  surf 
at  Kamakura. 

Outside  the  fraternity  my  most  intimate  friend  was  Melville  Anderson 
Best  Anderson,  an  enthusiastic  and  brilliant  student  of  serious  and 
literature.      We  had  first  met  as  companions  in   misery,  bal-  Brayton 
ancing  plates  at  Cascadilla,  and  as  fellow  members  of  "the 
Strug"   with   its   idealistic   outgrowth,    "the   Grove   Literary 
Society."     We  later  established    an    affectionate   association, 
still  unbroken  for  half  a  century.     In  witness  of  this  fact,  on 
my  seventieth  birthday  —  January  19,  1920  —  Anderson  read 
before  an  intimate  group  of  friends,  a  noble  poem  in  my  honor, 
lauding  beyond  their  merits  certain  qualities  which  I  happen 
to  possess. 

With  Alembert  W.  Brayton,  a  scientific  student  who  at- 
tracted my  special  interest  because  of  his  originality  and  versatil- 
ity, I  came  to  have  afterward,  in  Indiana,  many  close  relations, 
forming  a  tie  not  weakened  by  thirty  years  of  separation. 


3 

As  already  indicated,  membership  in  Delta  Upsilon 
was  to  me  and  my  comrades  a  wholesome  and  help- 
ful experience.  But  one  who  has  been  intimately 


The  Days  of  a  Man  £1870 

concerned  with  college  problems  for  the  better  part 
of  a  lifetime  cannot  fail  to  admit  that  there  are  two 
sides  to  the  fraternity  question.  And  my  readers 
will  perhaps  permit  me  to  devote  a  few  pages  (which 
may  be  skipped  at  will)  to  a  general  discussion  of 
the  matter. 

College  The  "Greek  Letter  Fraternity"  is  an  institution 
/rater-  peculiar  to  America  and  wholly  unlike  any  society 
found  elsewhere.  Social  and  literary  clubs,  associ- 
ations for  pleasure  or  deviltry,  exist  in  some  form 
wherever  young  people  are  gathered  together.  But 
-a  college  fraternity  differs  from  the  others  in  being 
more  permanent  and  more  general  in  its  purposes, 
and  in  having  under  one  organization  representative 
chapters  in  various  institutions  of  learning. 
Studenten-  The  German  Studenten-Corps  is  not  at  all  of  the 
CorPs  same  sort.  That  apparently  exists  for  the  obvious 
immediate  aims  of  drinking  and  dueling,  both 
reputed  to  conduce  to  the  development  of  "nerve." 
A  Corps  student  should  be  prepared  to  swallow  with- 
out embarrassment  three  steins  of  beer  in  quick 
succession,  and  to  fight  promptly  with  any  one  of 
his  caste  who  stares  or  scowls  at  him.  Scars  on  the 
face  (the  more  conspicuous  the  better)  are  the 
prized  and  visible  testimonials  of  courage.  The 
general  purpose  of  the  Corps  and  its  Kneipe  is  to 
teach  the  conventional  manners  of  the  aristocrat, 
to  sing  loudly,  clearly,  and  in  unison,  to  carry  beer 
without  nausea,  and  to  fight  duels  without  flinching; 
its  final  aim  is  the  perfection  of  the  military  spirit. 
The  singing  is  worth  while.  But  the  best  type  of 
German  student  does  not,  as  a  rule,  belong  to  these 
noisy,  generally  dissipated,  and  intolerant  sets.  And 
in  1913  I  was  told  that  since  the  century  began 


1870]  Honor  Societies 

Corps  membership  had  fallen  from  about  seventy- 
five  per  cent  of  the  student  body  to  twenty  per  cent. 
In  1910  I  met  in  Berlin  the  president  of  a  student 
"  Total  Abstinent  Gese/lschaft." 

The  parent  of  modern  Greek  Letter  groups  arose  PH 
as  a  medium  for  encouraging  youths  of  promise.  Beta 
This  was  the  "Phi  Beta  Kappa  Society,"  founded  Kappa 
at  the  College  of  William  and  Mary,  Williamsburg, 
Virginia,  on  December  5,  1776  —  not  a  fraternity 
in  the  modern  sense,  but  rather  a  means  of  granting 
honors  in  literature.  The  persistence  and  expansion 
of  Phi  Beta  Kappa  has  been  a  prominent  factor  in 
our  colleges  and  universities,  the  actual  members  in 
each  institution  electing  each  year  a  certain  number 
of  associates  from  the  higher  classes ;  the  institutions 
themselves,  however,  have  not,  as  a  rule,  formally 
recognized  the  organization.  Phi  Beta  Kappa  had 
not  been  established  at  Cornell  at  the  time  of  my 
graduation.  Through  the  interest  of  the  local  group 
at  Stanford  I  later  became  a  retroactive  member. 

In  science,  Sigma  Xi,  founded  by  Professor  Henry  Sigma  Xi 
Shaler  Williams  at  Cornell  in  1896,  of  which  I  was  a 
charter  member,  runs  parallel  with  Phi  Beta  Kappa 
in  literature.  For  the  main  address  at  the  banquet 
of  the  society's  first  general  convention  at  St.  Louis 
in  1903,  I  chose  as  my  title  our  motto  —  cnrovST] 
^vvijov — which  I  translated  as  "Comrades  in  Zeal." 
Within  the  last  twenty  years  other  scholarship  soci- 
eties have  arisen,  with  membership  confined  to  pro- 
fessional schools  —  Law,  Medicine,  Engineering,  and 
Journalism. 

But  there  are  among  students,  as  we  have  seen, 
other  bonds  than  those  of  scholarship.     This  fact 


The  Days  of  a  Man  £1870 

gave  rise  to  the  many  national  college  fraternities 
features  (and  sororities,  the  "sister"  form  among  young 
women)  which  assumed  from  the  first  a  relationship 
and  intimacy  never  contemplated  by  Phi  Beta 
Kappa.  The  element  of  secrecy  also,  real  or  pre- 
_tended,  was  early  adopted  by  all  except  Delta 
Upsilon,  in  imitation  of  the  Masons  and  other 
fraternal  organizations,  and  in  earlier  periods  was 
used  to  cover  numerous  pranks  and  deviltries. 
Sometimes  also  a  fraternity  led  in  political  combi- 
nations both  in  college  and  out.  A  special  feature 
was  the  law  or  custom  by  which  a  man  enrolled  in 
one  group  could  never  afterward  legitimately  join 
another. 

In  the  beginning,  election  to  a  fraternity  was  a 
distinction  —  and  so  sometimes  it  is  today.  In 
Delta  Upsilon  and  some  other  groups  no  freshmen 
were  originally  eligible,  a  rule  later  abandoned 
The  through  the  exigencies  of  the  "Chapter  House." 
chapter  por  about  thirty  years  ago  fraternities  everywhere 
entered  on  an  entirely  new  set  of  conditions,  due  to 
the  acquisition  of  individual  residences  in  which 
the  members  generally  live,  and  to  the  support  of 
which  each  one  contributes.  A  degree  of  uniform 
temper  is  necessary  within  the  group,  and  the  house 
must  be  kept  filled ;  members  should,  of  course,  have 
the  money  to  pay  their  share  of  the  general  expenses, 
though  the  possession  of  ample  means  is  hardly  a 
proper  gauge  of  personal  worth.  Furthermore, 
while  the  Chapter  House  promotes  closer  friendships 
and  coordination  of  ideals,  it  also  involves  other 
disadvantages  to  which  Delta  Upsilon  has  been 
subject  not  less  than  others,  and  which  I  may 
briefly  enumerate. 
C62  3 


1870]  The  College  Fraternity 

Privacy  may  easily  tend  to  careless  living.  As  a  Downward 
matter  of  fact,  some  time  since,  many  fraternities  tendencies 
throughout  the  country  bade  fair  to  degenerate  into 
drinking  clubs.  Within  the  last  ten  years  this 
condition  has  been  remedied  by  the  attitude  of  self- 
respecting  university  faculties  on  the  one  hand  and 
the  action  of  the  central  committees  of  the  various 
national  fraternities  on  the  other.  I  need  not  insist 
that  a  competent  university  management  must  and 
will  find  ways  to  suppress  student  drinking  wherever 
or  in  whatever  form  it  may  appear.  Dissipated  men 
are  centers  of  corrosion,  and  it  is  not  worth  while  to 
waste  educational  energies  on  those  who  make  bad 
use  of  them.  This  the  German  universities  also 
have  found  out.  Professor  Eucken  once  spoke  to 
me  bitterly  of  the  mischief  done  by  "the  beer  phi- 
listine"  and  by  returning  alumni  who  claim  that 
Jena  has  lost  its  "spirit"  because  the  students  are 
turning  sober! 

In  general,  moreover,  scholarship  standards  are  Fraternity 
lower  in  the  fraternities  than  among  "barbarian"  standards 
students.  For  this  there  are  several  causes.  Greek 
Letter  groups  often  choose  their  initiates  before 
they  really  know  them,  and  freshmen  with  apparent 
social  availability  often  run  the  shortest  course; 
strong  men,  on  the  contrary,  usually  ripen  late 
and  are  seldom  early  picked  as  "winners."  Fra- 
ternity men  on  the  whole,  also,  are  specially  occupied 
with  "student  activities,"  which  of  course  afford 
good  drill  in  executive  work,  but  should  not  replace 
mental  training.  The  man  who  leaves  college  with 
the  most  exact  knowledge  and  the  widest  horizon 
of  understanding  will  keep  ahead  through  life. 

Finally,  the  occupants  of  a  Chapter  House  fre- 


The  Days  of  a  Man  £1870 

Wasted  quently  spend  altogether  too  much  time  in  loafing, 
energy  smoking,  playing  cards,  and  talking  in  desultory 
fashion  about  things  not  worth  while.  Daudet 
says  of  certain  men  that  "they  sat  around,  they  did 
not  think,  they  did  not  speak  —  just  smoked."  The 
use  of  tobacco  is  a  handicap  to  either  teacher  or 
student.  Recalling  once  more  the  advice  of  Professor 
Swain,  both  should  "let  their  competitors  smoke." 
One  thing,  however,  is  perfectly  clear:  if  the  residents 
in  any  chapter  fall  steadily  below  par,  something  is 
wrong  with  its  membership  or  its  mode  of  life. 

As  a  college  teacher  for  forty-five  years,  and  a 
fraternity  man  still  longer,  I  do  not  condemn  the 
system  as  a  whole,  because  I  know  from  experience 
that  great  good  may  come  of  it  if  all  cooperate  to 
worthy  ends.  For  that,  however,  fraternities  must 
first  rise  above  their  easily  besetting  sins  —  idleness, 
snobbery,  lavish  expenditure,  and  dissipation.  As 
for  the  sororities,  their  standards  are  naturally 
higher  on  the  whole  than  those  of  the  young  men. 
They  are,  nevertheless,  affected  by  the  same  general 
problems,  except,  of  course,  those  of  dissipation. 


I  would  by  no  means  seem  to  imply  that  the  evils 
mentioned  above  are,  or  have  been,  confined  to  the 
groups  just  under  discussion.  Various  forms  of  in- 
dividual deviltry  due  to  an  exaggerated  or  perverted 
sense  of  humor  may  break  out  at  almost  any  time, 
anywhere.  Andrew  D.  White,  the  first  president  of 
Cornell  University,  mentions  in  his  autobiography 
two  affairs  on  which  I  can  throw  a  little  light.  The 
first  was  the  printing  and  distribution  of  a  so-called 
C643 


1870]  Incidents  at  Cornell 

"mock  program/'  a  disreputable  document  setting  The 
forth  (in  obscene  fashion)  the  alleged  peculiarities  mock 
of  the  different  participants  in  an  approaching  public  *rogram 
performance.    This  poster  was  the  work  of  one  or 
two  sophomores,  and  its  purpose  was  to  slur  the 
freshmen.     Having  failed  to  detect  the  individual  wholesome 
culprits,  the  president  suspended  all  the  officers  of  disciPline 
the  class,  although  he  was  fully  assured  that  as  a 
whole  they  had  had  no  share  in  the  affair  itself. 
As  I  remember,  the  students  generally  knew  who 
wrote  the  poster;   he  was,  in  fact,  one  of  the  men 
actually  suspended. 

White's  action  stirred  up  opposition  among  the 
students,  and  as  a  contributor  to  the  Cornell  Era  — 
the  college  daily  —  I  was  asked  to  write  an  editorial 
protesting  against  the  punishment  of  innocent  indi- 
viduals for  the  sins  of  somebody  else  over  whom 
they  had  no  actual  control.  I  wrote,  but  not  what 
had  been  requested.  My  effort  (somewhat  vigorous, 
I  thought)  denounced  the  vulgar  performance  and 
all  connected  with  it,  and  supported  the  president 
in  his  efforts  to  make  it  clear  that  public  indecency 
would  not  be  tolerated.  The  editor  declined  to 
publish  what  I  turned  in,  but  White's  vigorous 
action  put  an  end  to  that  kind  of  performance. 

The  other  case  was  distinctly  unique.    A  student,  A  student 
Philip  H.  Clark,  mature-looking  and  bearded  after  Prank 
the  fashion  of  his  time,  came  before  the  faculty  on 
the  charge  of  impersonating  a  professor  in  a  lecture 
given  by  him  in  Dundee,  Yates  County.     Clark 
replied:  "I  did  give  a  lecture  in  Dundee.    I  do  not 
know  what  other  people  said,  but  I  did  not  call 
myself  a  professor."    And  the  faculty  was  obliged 
to  let  it  go  at  that.     But  we  boys  knew  that  the 

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The  Days  of  a  Man 


E.  L.  R.  manager  of  the  affair  was  one  Eaton  La  Rue  Moses,  a 
Moses  remarkable  youth,  short,  stubby,  rosy-cheeked,  red- 
haired,  and  round-faced,  who  belonged  to  the  class 
of  '73  and  came  from  Dundee.  Not  exactly  scholarly, 
he  was  nevertheless  possessed  of  certain  extraordi- 
nary kinds  of  cleverness.  He  had  all  sorts  of  un- 
canny information;  he  could  write  essays  on  any 
side  of  any  question  —  he  was  in  fact  one  of  the 
college  "characters."  In  1871  he  produced  an  essay 
on  "What  I  Saw  in  Alsace-Lorraine."  Of  course  he 
had  never  been  there,  but  having  read  the  news- 
papers, as  he  read  everything,  in  omnivorous  fashion, 
he  was  able  to  frame  striking  pictures  and  relate 
touching  stories.  He  then  persuaded  Clark,  himself 
a  clever  and  reckless  fellow,  to  deliver  the  essay  as 
a  lecture  in  Dundee,  and  had  him  billed  as  Water- 
man T.  Hewett,  a  young  assistant  professor  in  the 
department  of  German. 

When  Clark  was  called  up  as  I  have  related,  he 
further  exonerated  himself  by  the  plea  that  the 
people  said  his  lecture  was  far  more  interesting 
than  those  of  most  of  the  Cornell  professors  they 
had  heard  —  which  was  doubtless  true. 

Moses,  being  a  printer  by  profession,  drifted  about 
after  graduation  from  office  to  office,  growing  more 
and  more  rotund,  taking  on  more  and  more  the 
aspect  of  a  Buddhist  idol,  until  he  finally  settled  in 
A  poiiti-  Jamestown,  Chautauqua  County.  There  he  aspired 
cal  to  be  "the  power  behind  the  throne"  in  local  politics, 
and  his  views  on  all  manner  of  topics  were  expressed 
in  crisp  and  cryptic  language,  with  a  wealth  of 
expletive  Mr.  Roosevelt  might  have  envied.  He 
was  always  the  center  of  a  more  or  less  admiring 
group  curious  to  know  what  he  would  say  next  and 
C663 


JOHN  CASPAR  BRANNER,   1896 


1870]  Women  at  Cornell 

who,  at  his  death  in  1918,  paid  him  the  honors  due 
to  a  hermit  philosopher  who  emerged  at  intervals  to 
discuss  worldly  matters  in  current  slang. 

Cornell  began  with  monastic  traditions,  and  up 
to  the  fall  of  1870  no  women  had  carried  on  regular 
studies  there;  in  that  year,  however,  Emma  S. 
Eastman,  Sophy  P.  Fleming,  and  my  sister  Mary 
were  allowed  to  attend  classes,  with  the  under- 
standing that  if  at  some  future  time  women  should 
be  formally  admitted  to  the  university,  their  work 
should  be  counted  toward  a  degree.  As  a  matter 
of  fact,  in  September,  1873,  coeducation  was  formally 
established  at  Cornell,  and  Sage  College,  a  dormitory 
for  women  built  by  Henry  W.  Sage,  was  opened  for 
their  reception. 

All  three  of  the  pioneers  were  excellent  students, 
and  won  the  respect  of  everybody  acquainted  with 
them.  Miss  Eastman  (Mrs.  L.  A.  Foster)  became 
prominent  as  a  suffrage  lecturer.  Miss  Fleming,  a 
girl  of  delicacy  and  refinement,  taught  for  many 
years;  recently  our  acquaintance  was  pleasantly 
renewed  when  I  found  her  acting  as  "house  mother" 
in  a  sorority  at  the  University  of  California.  My 
sister,  as  I  have  said,  married  and  thereafter  devoted 
herself  to  home  making. 

Our  general  lack  of  social  intercourse  with  women,  Lack  of 
I  have  felt  to  be  a  real  misfortune.    Thrown  back  socid_ 
upon  ourselves,  we  learned  too  little  of  the  amenities 
of  life ;  ignorance  of  the  best  conventions  was  there- 
fore a  distinct  handicap  with  most  of  us  for  some 
time  to  come.     For  college  men  there  is  no  other 
influence  so  wholesome  as  that  of  educated  women, 
and  there  exist  no  conditions  more  favorable  for  the 

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The  Days  of  a  Man  £1871 

choice  of  a  life  mate  than  are  found  in  a  coeducational 
institution.    This  of  course  is  not  the  whole  story, 
but  to  my  mind  the  advantages  both  to  men  and 
women  distinctly  outweigh  all  incidental  drawbacks. 
rbe  Fortunately  for  me  and  several  others,  there  was 

Mitchell  one  cultured  home  where  we  were  always  welcome  — 
that  of  three  sisters  by  the  name  of  Mitchell  who 
lived  in  a  red  farmhouse  beyond  Cascadilla  Creek. 
Our  friendship  with  Miss  Minnie,  the  youngest,  now 
Mrs.  Barnes,  was  wholesome  and  helpful  at  a  time 
when  social  opportunities  were  scanty. 

The  paucity  of  womankind  in  whom  we  had  an 
intellectual  interest  tended  to  turn  our  thoughts 
perhaps  unduly  toward  what  I  then  described  as 

Glimpses  of  the  golden  future, 
Foretastes  of  the  fair  to-be, 

and  tinged  all  our  poetical  effusions,  whether  serious 

"Era"       or  not.     Four  of  us   in   "The   Strug"  —  Leavitt, 

poetasters   Anderson,  Dudley,  and  I  — had  some  skill  in  the 

making  of  verses,  which  we   read   at  our  weekly 

meetings,  and  often  printed  in  the  Era: 

Poets  of  the  better  era, 

Poets  of  the  Cornell  Era, 

Knock  the  spots  all  off  from  Shakespere; 

so  we  stoutly  asserted,  before  an  incredulous  world. 
One  of  my  efforts,  entitled  "To  Minnie,"  was  sung 
by  her  to  the  blithe  tune  of  "Cocachelunk,"  an  air 
then  popular  in  college  circles.  The  poem  read  as 
follows : 

In  the  castles  grim  and  stately, 
In  the  halls  where  grandeur  reigns, 

Stood  of  old  the  Mastersingers, 
Chanting  high,  heroic  strains  — 

C68  3 


18713  Verse  Making 

Notes  which  ring  down  through  the  ages,  rbe 

Wakening  men  to  nobler  life;  Minnie- 

Urging  them  to  deeds  of  valor,  song 
Raising  heroes  in  the  strife, 

While  the  idle  Minnesingers 

Sang  in  some  fair  lady's  bower 
Lovelorn  ditties,  soft  and  tender,  — 

Songs  to  while  the  passing  hour. 

Merry  lives  they  lived,  and  careless 

As  a  moth  in  summer's  sheen, 
Till  they  slept,  and  nature  o'er  them 

Loving  spread  her  bedquilt  green. 

When  a  boy  I  dreamed  that  ever 

In  the  world's  black  moral  night 
I  would  be  a  Mastersinger 

Heralding  the  coming  light. 

But,  alas  for  youth's  ambition! 

Idly  now  I  drift  along; 
And  I'm  but  a  Minniesinger, 

And  my  life's  a  Minnie-song.1 

5 

Many  of  our  contributions,  however,  were  in 
serious  vein.  Dudley  in  particular  wrote  some 
things  that  were  really  fine.  And  Anderson's  flights 
were  for  the  most  part  distinctly  literary,  harking 
back  in  a  degree  to  the  Miltonic  manner  and  fairly 
presaging  his  masterpiece,  a  translation  of  the 
"Divina  Commedia"  in  its  original  terza  rima. 
Leavitt's  verse  was  pleasantly  human,  dealing  gently 
with  current  affairs.  For  example : 

1  It  should  perhaps  be  added  that  our  good  friend  was  some  years  older 
than  any  of  us,  her  devoted  admirers. 

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Grove  life  is  pleasant,  and  methinks 
These  lines  may  serve  as  swift-forged  links 
Unpolished  but  with  greater  power 
To  hold,  each  set,  its  pleasant  hour 
Safe  from  Oblivion's  wasting  touch 
And  selfish  Care's  corroding  clutch. 

Of  my  verse  Anderson  used  to  say  that  I  often 

started  in  to  make  a  beautiful  picture  and  then 

threw  mud  at  it,  that  being  his  interpretation  of 

my  sense  of  humor.    It  is  true  that  most  of  the  lines 

I  then  wrote  were  farcical.    I  made,  however,  some 

serious  metrical  translations,  especially  of  lyrics  by 

Goethe.     In  the  last  term  of  my  senior  year  I  was 

chosen  class  poet  and  acted  in  that  capacity  on 

Class    Day    in    Commencement    Week.      On    that 

occasion  I  read  "An  Arthurian  Legend,"  a  humorous 

epic  detailing  the  adventures  of  one  Arthur  B.,  a 

A          classmate,  "late  of  Bedford,  England,"  on  his  way 

birthday   to  a  birthday  party  staged  at  Free  Hollow,  some 

o*r  3       miles  out  in  the  country,  on  a  furiously  rainy  night, 

April  i    the  first  of  April. 

The  class  song  previously  chosen  was  for  some 
reason  rejected  on  the  morning  of  the  very  day. 
The  committee  then  ordered  a  new  one  to  the  tune 
of  "Araby's  Daughter,"  shutting  up  Copeland  and 
me  in  separate  rooms,  each  with  instructions  to 
produce  a  set  of  suitable  lines.  Mine  happened  to 
meet  with  favor,  the  burden  being: 

We  love  thee  and  honor  thee  ever,  Cornell. 

Upon  leaving  college,  for  the  next  fifteen  years  I  wrote 
no  more  verse,  a  few  whimsical  effusions  excepted. 
But  shortly  after  my  second  marriage  in  1887  I  was 
impelled  to  work  out  some  serious  thoughts  in  poetic 

C  703 


1872]  Music  and  Poetry 

form.    A  few  of  these,  representing  a  narrow  vein  of 
fancy,  have  always  seemed  to  me  worth  while.1 

Real  poetry  (as  distinguished  from  mere  verse)  Music  a 
has  always  had  a  compelling  hold  on  me.     Music,  closed 
unfortunately,  has  been  more  or  less  of  a  closed  book 
book,  though  I  take  delight  in  what  may  be  called 
"Songs  in  Words  of  One  Syllable."    Ballads,  old  or 
new,  minor  laments  of  oppressed  races,  —  all  direct 
appeals  from  the  heart  of  man  or  nation,  simply  and 
nobly  phrased,  —  stir  me  as  they  do  others.    Recently 
the  setting  to  music  of  some  of  my  own  lines  by  an 
accomplished    composer,    Herman    T.    Koerner   of 
Buffalo,  has  given  me  a  special  pleasure.     But  the 
intricacies  of  chamber  music   and   the   like,   "the 
structure  brave,  the  manifold  music"  of  Browning's 
"Abt  Vogler,"  fail  to  touch  me. 

During  my  college  course  three  poets,  Browning, 
Emerson,  and  Lowell,  strongly  appealed  to  me.  To 
a  degree,  also,  I  found  satisfaction  in  Longfellow, 
Holmes,  and  Brownell.  Of  foreign  poets,  Schiller 
pleased  me  most;  his  dramas  well  repay  the  agony 
incident  to  German  syntax. 

Of  Browning  (as  well  as  of  both  Emerson  and  Favorite 
Lowell)  I  already  knew  something  before  going  to  i°ets 
college;    a  tiny  volume  entitled   "Lyrics  of  Life" 
had  fallen  into  my  hands,  and  profoundly  impressed 
me,  though  parts  of  it  were  grievously  obscure.    At 
that  time  one  of  our  neighbors,  a  Scotchman  named 
Mclntosh,  wrote  a  doggerel  review  which  I  thought 
then  (and  still  think)  had  a  certain  value: 

1  A  number  of  my  poems,  written  at  intervals  and  mostly  while  at  leisure  on 
the  sea  or  on  trains,  have  been  privately  printed  (but  never  published)  under 
the  title,  "To  Barbara,  and  Other  Verses." 


The  Days  of  a  Man  [1869 

"Lyrics  "Lyrics  of  Life"  by  Robert  Browning, — 

of  Life"  "Confound  the  thing,"  said  my  neighbor,  frowning; 

"I've  read  at  'em,  dug  at  'em  over  and  over, 
But  hang  me  if  I  can  discover 
A  glimmer  of  meaning  from  cover  to  cover!" 

My  neighbor's  disposed  to  be  dull,  however. 
I  sent  to  Boston  at  once  and  got  one. 
The  frontispiece  is  attractive,  very;  — 
Six  little  girls,  the  largest  is  reading. 
If  she  understands  it,  then  ought  one 
Older  than  all  of  them  put  together 
And  still  have  a  dozen  years  to  spare. 

Nevertheless,  our  critic  finds  himself  almost  as 
baffled  as  his  neighbor,  though  he  does  make  some 
exceptions : 

Count  Gismond,  Evelyn  Hope,  The  Glove, 

A  flight  on  Fame,  and  some  stanzas  on  Love  — 

How  they  brought  the  news  from  Aix  to  Ghent, 

Though  the  errand  which  sent 

Roland  away  on  such  headlong  speeding 

I've  yet  to  learn,  'tis  not  told  in  the  reading. 

But  that  is  all,  let  the  Lyrics  be  hooted; 
Never  were  sentences  so  involuted 
And  twisted  and  turned,  so  all  unsuited 
For  simple  folks!     Let  the  Lyrics  be  bruited 
And  burned  and  booted  and  tossed  sky  high !  — 
The  No,  not  all  of  them!     Beautiful  Evelyn, 

critic  Nothing  more  tender  for  souls  to  revel  in  — 

relents  Reading  that  over  has  made  civil,  and 

I  spare  'em  all  for  Beautiful  Evelyn! 

Entering  the  university,  I  found  Browning  gener- 
ally appreciated  there.  Anderson  especially  took 
great  satisfaction  in  him,  and  we  used  to  read  to- 
gether "The  Flight  of  the  Duchess,"  "A  Toccata 
of  Galuppi's,"  "Love  among  the  Ruins/'  "Andrea 

C  72  ] 


i s/o]  Favorite  Poems 

del  Sarto,"  and  other  poems  which  illumined  places 
we  hoped  some  day  to  visit.  But  I  never  felt  that 
the  labored  crabbedness  of  Browning  was  an  element 
of  strength.  In  a  poem  on  Florence  written  a  few 
years  ago  I  referred  to  the  two  of  "Casa  Guidi" 
who  as 

Singers  of  all  time 
Wrought  deathless  themes 
In  jagged  rhymes. 

Among  Lowell's  poems  those  which  most  impressed 
me  were  "The  Present  Crisis,"  "The  Washers  of  the 
Shroud,"  and  "The  Biglow  Papers." 

Emerson's  "Boston  Hymn"  particularly  appealed  The 
to    my    adolescent,    inherited    instinct    for    moral  "Bost™ 
exhortation : 

The  word  of  the  Lord  by  night 
To  the  watching  Pilgrims  came  — 

and  so  to  me  it  came. 

God  said,  I  am  tired  of  Kings, 
I  suffer  them  no  more; 
Up  to  my  ear  each  morning  brings 
The  outrage  of  the  poor  — 

were  lines  that  made  upon  me  a  deep  and  lasting 
impression,  as  did  also  the  warning  which  follows : 

In  daylight  or  in  dark 

My  thunderbolt  has  eyes  to  see 

His  way  home  to  the  mark. 

Among  prose  authors  my  reading  in  college  was  Bret 
extensive,  as  much  so  as  circumstances  would  permit.  Harte 
At  the  Grove  we  read  all  the  Bret  Harte  stories  that 
had   already  appeared,   and   in   my  junior  year  I 
ventured   on   a   little   lecture   tour  to   neighboring 

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towns,  delivering  a  talk  on  Bret  Harte  and  the 
Sierras,  which  I  termed  "The  Men  of  No  Account."  l 
As  a  talk  it  was  none  too  coherent,  and  it  doubtless 
went  over  the  heads  of  the  people;  but  it  enabled 
me  to  say  some  things  I  then  thought  true,  and 
probably  some  of  them  really  were.  On  one  occasion 
I  heard  a  critic  declare :  "There  is  too  much  sang-froid 
in  his  talk  —  too  much  sing-song,  you  know." 

But  of  all  authors  who  influenced  my  thought  and 
writing  while  at  Cornell,  I  should  put  Thoreau  first. 
Something  about  his  crisp,  crystalline  sentences 
always  appealed  to  me.  His  love  of  nature,  his 
sharply  defined  silhouettes  of  the  beasts  and  trees, 
especially  his  appeals  for  personal  freedom,  made 
on  me  a  profound  impression.  His  address  on  John 
Brown,  for  example,  affected  me  more  than  any 
other  political  writing  whatever;  not  so  much 
because  of  the  tragedy  which  called  it  forth  as  for 
the  illumination  thrown  by  it  on  Brown's  life, 
death,  and  purpose  —  the  suppression  of  all  thought 
of  self,  by  which  the  man  became  "Old  Brown  no 
longer,  but  an  Angel  of  Light." 

Andersen's       Curiously  enough,  another  writer  who  influenced 

tales          me   was   Hans   Christian   Andersen.     The   simple, 

gentle   phraseology  of  his  fairy  tales   suggested  a 

style  which  I  have  sometimes  used  for  children's 

stories  as  well  as  for  grown-up  satire. 

Beauties         One  other  great  source  of  inspiration,  not  alien 
°^  to  that  derived  from  good  literature,  lay  open  to  us 

nature  .  ,    .  °    f  •    11       • 

in  the  natural  beauty  of  environment,  especially  in 
the  three  fine  months  of  our  New  York  year,  May, 

1  At  about  the  same  time  Anderson  went  among  the  people  with  a  lecture 
on  Milton,  walking  home  four  miles  one  night  with  a  package  of  shirts  in  lieu 
of  a  fee. 

1:74:1 


1872]  College  Prizes 

June,  and  October.  With  spring  came  flood-tide  in 
the  waterfalls  and  a  burst  of  flowers  in  the  ravine, 
melting  blue  vistas  down  the  lake,  and  long  stretches 
of  green  in  the  south-lying  valley.  Later  when 

...  Autumn  came 

And  laid  his  burning  finger  on  the  leaves, 

we  rejoiced  and  were  glad.  Tingeing  our  every 
memory  of  Cornell  is  the  ineffaceable  charm  of  the 
University's  setting. 


During  my  college  course  a  number  of  money 
prizes  were  offered  for  excellence  in  different  subjects. 
I  tried  for  three  of  these,  and  for  different  reasons 
failed  to  secure  any  of  them.  The  first  was  offered 
in  Botany  in  my  first  term.  My  knowledge  of  the 
subject  matter  then  far  outran  my  experience  in 
writing  examination  papers,  and  the  prize  went  to  a 
classmate  who  reversed  these  conditions. 

The  next  prize  was  one  in  Entomology.     But  by  Prize 
the    committee's    decision    three    of   us    had    done  in 
equally  well,  and  the  money  was  therefore  to  be 
equally  divided  between   Frederic  W.   Simonds,   a 
geologist,  now  professor  in  the  University  of  Texas, 
Comstock,  and  myself.     "Simonds  had  made  the 
neatest   and  most  accurate   drawings,   Jordan  had 
written  the  best  paper,  and  Comstock  seemed  to 
know  the  most  about  the  subject." 

Simonds  and  I  now  held  a  conference.  We  two 
had  money  enough  in  sight  for  another  college 
year  — :  not  clearly  visible,  to  be  sure,  but  plain  to 
the  eyes  of  hope.  Comstock  was  already  feeling 

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the  bottom  of  his  pocket.  But  he  couldn't  afford 
to  leave  his  insects  to  go  out  to  make  money,  and 
we  couldn't  afford  to  lose  him.  Besides,  he  deserved 
the  prize,  for  it  is  better  to  know  animals  than  to 
write  about  them  nicely  or  to  adorn  one's  knowledge 
with  fair  pictures.  So  we  stood  back  and  let  him 
have  the  money  he  needed  and  had  really  won. 
Prize  in  The  third  prize  was  offered  in  my  senior  year  in 
History  Modern  French  History,  and  we  were  informed  that 
no  award  would  be  made  unless  at  least  five  persons 
presented  themselves  for  competitive  examination. 
.As  a  matter  of  fact  there  were  just  five  possible 
candidates.  One  of  these  (a  young  fellow  who 
afterward  became  president  of  a  so-called  "American 
University"  which  offered  paper  degrees  in  Australia 
and  England)  had  borrowed  all  my  elaborate  notes 
on  White's  lectures,  and  combined  them  with  his 
own.  He  then  asked  especially  that  his  notebook 
might  be  considered  in  the  competition.  This 
request  involving  a  patent  unfairness,  I  went  off  to 
the  glens  on  the  day  set  for  the  examination,  which 
was  accordingly  not  held. 

Personally  I  do  not  believe  that  universities 
should  offer  prizes  for  work,  or  should  grant  honors 
of  any  kind  if  these  are  viewed  purely  as  a  stimulus 
to  scholarship.  No  scholarship  worthy  the  name 
rests  on  outside  rewards;  every  true  student  works 
for  the  sake  of  knowledge.  If  he  competes  for 
prizes  —  a  legitimate  proceeding,  of  course  —  it  is 
probably  because  he  needs  the  money,  not  the 
Custom  stimulus.  And  soon  after  our  day  the  custom  was 
*****  abandoned  at  Cornell,  as  it  did  not  fulfill  the  ex- 
pectations at  first  entertained  by  the  president. 

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CHAPTER    FOUR 


THE  new  institution  had  begun  its  work  amid  Andrew  D. 
great  enthusiasm  and  as  a  fountain  of  educational  wbe  as 
hope.  Dr.  Andrew  Dickson  White,  its  leader  and 
president,  was  then  only  thirty-six  years  of  age. 
Because  of  his  short  height  and  rather  slender  build, 
I  used  to  say  that  he  was  "a  little  man  who  looked 
as  though  he  might  have  been  big  if  he  had  wanted 
to,"  for  he  gave  the  impression  of  entire  competency. 
He  was  an  effective  and  impressive  speaker,  with  a 
ready  command  of  choice  English.  His  addresses 
in  defense  of  what  we  afterward  called  the  "de- 
mocracy of  education,"  as  well  as  those  in  favor  of 
religious  freedom,  were  classics  of  their  kind.  His 
relation  toward  students  was  always  delightful,  and 
he  had  a  special  genius  for  group  inspiration  — 
that  is,  for  influencing  a  large  number  at  once  toward 
higher  aims.  I  doubt  if  any  other  American  uni- 
versity executive  has  been  his  equal  in  these  regards. 
Even  President  Eliot,  with  his  great  intellectual 
power,  keen,  analytical  discrimination,  and  accurate 
scholarship,  seemed  to  lack  somewhat  in  personal 
sympathy. 

Possessed  of  ample  means,  after  graduating  from 
Yale  College  White  spent  three  years  abroad  in 
study  and  travel,  returning  to  fill,  for  seven  years, 
the  chair  of  History  and  English  Literature  in  the 
University  of  Michigan.  While  at  Ann  Arbor  he 
was  deeply  impressed  by  the  educational  ideals  of 
the  distinguished  first  president.  Dr.  Henry  P. 

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The  Days  of  a  Man  £1868 

Tappan,  who,  more  than  any  one  else,  fixed  the 
purposes  of  our  state  university  system.  In  1864, 
during  another  visit  to  Europe,  he  did  loyal  serv- 
ice in  behalf  of  the  Union  cause,  especially  in 
England. 

News  of  his  nomination  as  state  senator  for  his 
native  town  of  Syracuse,  New  York,  now  recalled 
him  to  America.  During  his  subsequent  service  in 
the  state  senate  —  of  which  he  was  the  youngest 
member  —  he  came  into  close  association  with 
Ezra  Ezra  Cornell  —  the  oldest  —  whom  he  gradually 
Cornell  brought  into  sympathy  with  his  own  educational 
ideals.  These  relations,  which  ripened  into  a  warm 
friendship,  led  to  results  of  the  highest  importance. 
After  a  long  and  bitter  fight  against  adverse  interests 
represented  in  the  legislature,  the  details  of  which  I 
need  not  discuss,  the  state  accepted  Mr.  Cornell's 
gift  of  a  commanding  college  site  at  Ithaca  on 
Cayuga  Lake,  supplemented  by  the  sum  of  $500,000 
as  the  nucleus  of  endowment  for  the  proposed  uni- 
versity initiated  as  a  result  of  the  Morrill  Act  of 
The  1862.  This  federal  statute,  the  work  of  Senator 
Morrill  Justin  Morrill  of  Vermont,  provided  for  the  founding 
in  each  state  of  an  institution  which  should  give 
instruction  in  Agriculture  and  Mechanic  Arts  in 
addition  to  the  usual  courses  in  the  Liberal  Arts  and 
Sciences.  To  that  end  each  state  was  awarded  its 
quota  of  "scrip."1  In  nearly  every  case,  unfortu- 
nately, scrip  was  sold  cheaply,  "on  a  glutted  market," 
without  effort  to  locate  land.  But  Cornell  Uni- 
versity, despite  a  pressing  need  of  funds  in  its 

1  Official  warrant  for  the  possession  of  unoccupied  or  unsold  government 
land,  at  that  time  mainly  confined  to  the  region  west  of  Lake  Michigan.  Under 
the  Morrill  Act,  scrip  was  distributed  on  a  basis  of  representation  in  Congress  — 
that  is,  according  to  the  relative  population  of  the  various  states. 


ANDREW  DICKSON  WHITE,   1868 


i868]     Foundation  of  Cornell  University 

early  development,  held  on  to  the  New  York  allot- 
ment of  700,000  acres.  This  it  was  enabled  to  do 
through  the  unselfish  interest  of  Mr.  Cornell,  who  Mr. 
first  selected  the  tracts  with  excellent  judgment  Cor 
and  then  advanced  large  loans  upon  them.  Millions  a 
of  dollars  were  thus  saved  to  the  university,  though 
Mr.  Cornell  was  violently  attacked  on  the  ground 
that  he  was  "planning  to  rob  the  state,  seeking  to 
erect  a  monument  to  himself."  Concerning  these 
wanton  slanders,  he  merely  remarked  that  he  was 
"glad  they  were  made  in  his  lifetime,"  for  such 
attacks  are  hard  to  answer  later  on.  The  Morrill 
lands  being  finally  sold  at  a  good  price,  the  insti- 
tution was  firmly  established  with  great  potential 
resources,  following  which,  on  the  founder's  advice, 
White  became  its  first  president. 


The  early  years  of  my  Alma  Mater,  though  rela-  pioneer 
tively  crude  and  cramped,  were  enriched  by  an  enthusiasm 
enthusiasm  hard  to  maintain  in  days  of  prosperity. 
And  the  pioneer  impulse  far  outweighed,  to  our 
minds,  any  deficiency  in  coordination,  equipment, 
or  tradition.  At  that  time  we  were  all  young 
together,  freshman  students,  freshman  profess- 
ors, freshman  president,  without  experience,  or 
tradition  to  guide  or  impede.  But  we  had  youth 
and  we  had  truth,  and  not  even  the  gods  have 
those ! 

It  was  a  favorite  theory  of  Ezra  Cornell  that 
students  should  be  able  to  pay  their  way  by  manual 
and  other  labor;  and  in  the  beginning,  therefore,  we 

C793 


The  Days  of  a  Man  £1868 

student  were  encouraged  to  work  at  grading  and  the  digging 
employ  of  ditches  for  fifteen  cents  an  hour.  Most  of  us 
menl  proved  to  be  fairly  good  at  our  jobs,  though  some 
found  that  they  involved  too  great  a  draft  on  time 
and  strength.  A  certain  number,  however,  persisted, 
and  so  carried  themselves  through  college,  and  the 
report  that  a  student  without  money  could  pay  his 
way  soon  brought  to  the  new  institution  very  many 
extremely  able  men.  There  higher  education  was 
no  longer  an  expensive  luxury,  a  privilege  of  the 
rich;  nor  yet  a  matter  of  charity,  a  dole  to  the 
poor. 

Digging  for  the  foundation  of  the  McGraw  Build- 
ing, we  pioneers  often  saw  Mr.  Cornell,  a  tall,  spare 
man,  grave  and  kindly,  with  characteristic  dry 
humor  —  a  Lincolnish  sort,  "paring  down  his  speech 
to  keep  a  reserve  of  force  and  meaning,"  as  Thoreau 
said  of  John  Brown. 

Democracy  At  the  outset  Cornell  had  declared:  "I  would 
of  the  found  an  institution  in  which  any  person  can  find 
instruction  in  any  study ;"  this  revolution  in  higher 
education  it  was  White's  duty  to  carry  into  effect. 
Not  that  the  university  could  or  did  teach  literally 
everything,  for  no  institution  has  ever  yet  been 
rich  enough  to  undertake  such  a  task.  The  important 
thing  was  the  recognition  of  "the  democracy  of 
intellect,"  the  solid  basis  of  the  elective  system. 
Then  for  the  first  time  in  the  history  of  education, 
perhaps,  the  aristocracy  of  discipline  was  officially 
and  successfully  challenged.  The  student  was  not 
to  be  driven  over  a  prearranged  curriculum,  or 
"little  race  course,"  which  should  entitle  him  at  the 
finish  to  a  time-honored  badge  of  culture.  On  the 
contrary  he  was  to  have  access  to  that  particular 

C  80] 


i8683      Foundation  Ideals  of  Cornell 

form  of  training  which  would  most  strengthen  and 
enrich  his  life;  whatever  his  capacity  for  usefulness, 
it  should  have  the  right  of  way,  and  he  himself  was 
to  be  the  judge.  All  students  and  all  studies,  there- 
fore, were  to  be  placed  on  an  academic  equality,  for 
what  will  nourish  one  may  not  serve  for  another. 
But  the  university  was  of  course  to  ensure  that  each 
subject  be  sanely  and  lucidly  presented,  and  each 
piece  of  work  be  honestly  and  loyally  done.  Because 
the  new  institution  thus  stood  fundamentally  for 
the  rights  of  every  human  faculty,  men  came  from 
all  over  the  nation  to  its  pioneer  classes,  especially 
in  Natural  Science.  Meanwhile,  however,  things  of  Things 
the  spirit  were  not  forgotten;  Lowell,  as  well  as  oftbt 
Agassiz,  came  as  lecturer  at  the  very  beginning.  splrit 
And  at  White's  request  Lowell  wrote  the  lines 
inscribed  on  the  great  bell  Comstock  used  to  ring 
every  morning: 

I  call  as  fly  the  irrevocable  hours, 
Futile  as  air,  yet  strong  as  Fate  to  make 
Your  lives  of  sand  or  granite  —  awful  powers: 
Even  as  you  choose,  they  either  give  or  take. 

The  young  president  cherished,  moreover,  a  special 
faith  in  noble  architecture  as  a  means  of  culture. 
Some  day  he  hoped  there  might  arise  on  the  old 
Cornell  Farm  groups  as  fine  as  those  that  cluster 
about  the  towers  of  Magdalen,  and  a  chapel  as 
exquisite  as  that  of  King's  College.  He  had  faith 
also  in  the  inspiration  of  personality  in  the  class- 
room. So  the  current  grind  of  daily  recitations,  with 
its  petty  marking  system,  gave  way  to  laboratory 
and  lecture,  and  the  old  plodding  and  prodding 
which  smothered  all  interest  in  teacher  and  taught 

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yielded  to  real  contact  with  objects  and  ideas.  In 
White's  words,  the  traditional  college  of  the  day  was 

as  stagnant  as  a  Spanish  convent,  and  as  self-satisfied  as  a 
Bourbon  duchy  .  .  .  [its]  methods  outworn  and  the  students 
as  a  rule  confined  to  one  simple,  single  course,  in  which  the 
great  majority  of  them  took  no  interest. 

Another  novel  feature,  already  suggested,  was  the 
presence  of  men  from  sister  institutions  as  non- 
resident  professors.  Agassiz  and  Lowell,  both  from 
/um  t»  Harvard,  visibly  represented  cooperation  in  edu- 
cation, though  before  White's  time  universities  were 
prone  to  regard  themselves  as  competitors.  And 
Agassiz  once  told  me  that  a  Harvard  overseer  re- 
proached him  for  his  labors  at  Cornell,  saying  that 
he  and  Lowell  were  "traitors  to  Harvard"  in  thus 
helping  to  build  up  a  rival  institution.  Fortunately 
those  two  big  men  did  not  thus  narrowly  interpret 
academic  duty.  Nor  -did  White  himself;  and  he 
urged  graduates  of  early  days  to  "stand  by  the 
state  universities,  for  in  them  lies  the  educational 
hope  of  the  republic." 

Coeduca-  Coeducation,  then  gaining  a  scant  foothold,  chiefly 
tion  -m  the  West:,  also  entered  into  his  plans,  as  I  have 
already  made  clear.  For  he  firmly  believed  that 
men  and  women  could  develop  together  intellectually 
to  their  mutual  advantage  —  men  thereby  growing 
more  refined  and  sensitive,  women  more  sane  and 
self-contained.  In  like  manner  engineers  and  literary 
students,  he  thought,  would  also  help  each  other, 
the  former  gaining  by  contact  with  spiritual  ideals, 
the  latter  through  acquaintance  with  immutable 
fact. 
C823 


i868]        Above  All  Sects  Is  Truth 

He  also  often  said,  in  substance,  that 

the  most  precious  possession  of  any  nation  is  found  in  the 
talents  and  genius  of  its  youth,  all  other  matters  of  politics 
and  government  being  comparatively  of  little  moment.  Even 
were  all  natural  talent  saved  and  augmented,  we  should  still 
have  none  too  much  of  it  in  the  land.  Then  give  it  a  chance. 
The  university  should  be  open  to  all,  helpful  to  all,  without 
regard  to  caste,  sex,  color,  or  condition. 

Furthermore,  in  the  matter  of  religion  also,  White  Liberalism 
took  an  advanced  position  distinctly  rare  at  the  at 
time,  when  most  of  the  colleges  were  under  some 
form  of  denominational  control  and  purely  secular 
education  was  viewed  with  suspicion.  It  was  a 
general  custom,  therefore,  to  denounce  Cornell  as 
"godless,"  the  final  argument  with  many,  and  to 
label  its  president  as  a  foe  to  religion  because  he 
advocated  the  absolute  separation  of  education  from 
sectarian  bias  as  well  as  from  domination  by  any 
traditional  form  of  discipline.  To  such  minds,  the 
loftier  the  character  of  a  man  who  stood  out- 
side the  church,  the  greater  menace  he.  In  their 
eyes,  consequently,  Emerson  —  Lincoln  even  —  was 
a  stumbling-block. 

Cornell's  position  was  clearly  defined.  White 
eloquently  defended  religious  and  educational  toler- 
ance, as  did  also  Goldwin  Smith,  —  one  of  our  first 
and  ablest  professors,  —  who  came  from  Oxford. 
Among  other  gifts  made  by  the  latter  to  the  uni- 
versity is  a  stone  seat  inscribed  with  the  motto, 
"Above  all  sects  is  truth"  —  twin  to  Goethe's 
famous  phrase,  "Above  all  nations  is  humanity." 
The  gripping  power  of  these  doctrines  lay  in  their 
embodiment  in  human  personality;  they  were  lived 
before  our  eyes. 

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Another  factor,  characteristic  of  British  and  Ameri- 
can institutions  generally,  strengthened  the  bonds 
which  united  professors  and  students  at  Cornell. 
This  may  be  defined  as  sympathetic  cooperation. 
Meaning  It  lies  behind  the  endearing  term  "Alma  Mater," 
°f  which  I  never  heard  used  for  a  German  university. 
Ma**-  Goethe,  indeed,  spoke  of  Jena  as  "liebes,  ndrrisches 
Nest."  But  Jena  in  those  days  was  a  center  of 
student  debauchery,  and  the  "dear,  foolish  nest" 
abounded  in  costly  folly.  Some  one  once  asked  a 
student  from  the  University  of  Prague  if  he  loved  it. 
"Love  it!  No, I  hate  it!"  "And  why?"  "Because 
it's  a  State  affair."  But  with  the  American  con- 
ception of  the  State  as  a  cooperative  commonwealth, 
educational  relations  are  wholly  different,  and  the 
state  university  is  thought  of  as  "Alma  Mater"  by 
thousands  of  men  and  women.  Having  behind  it 
no  element  of  the  compulsory  and  its  degrees  not 
essential  to  professional  advancement,  it  stands  in  a 
very  different  relation  and  is  loved  by  its  alumni 
quite  as  warmly  as  Harvard  or  Yale.  The  Uni- 
versity of  Prague,  a  creation  of  soulless  officialism, 
has  as  a  whole  no  personality.  It  could  no  more  be 
the  object  of  love  than  a  post  office;  it  serves  mainly 
as  the  door  to  professional  preferment. 
Looking  A  second  great  advantage  possessed  by  American 
forward  institutions  is  that  they  are  never  complete,  but 
always  look  forward  to  something  better.  This 
gives  a  perennial  impulse  toward  progress.  The 
German  university,  on  the  contrary,  is  from  the 
first  a  perfect  representative  of  its  type,  with  practi- 
C  84] 


i868]   Future  of  the  American  University 

cally  no  hope  of  betterment.  In  1871,  Willard  Cornell 
Fiske,  professor  of  German  and  a  believer  in  German  and . 
efficiency,  wrote  for  the  Cornell  Era  a  discouraging  Berhn 
comparison  between  the  newly  founded  institution 
at  Ithaca  and  the  University  of  Berlin.  Prussia 
and  New  York  State  were  then  about  equal  in 
territory  and  not  far  apart  in  wealth  and  population. 
Berlin  emerged  full-fledged  from  the  very  first, 
with  adequate  libraries,  laboratories,  and  faculties; 
there  was  no  hesitation,  delay,  or  parsimony,  no 
need  to  wait  to  consult  or  persuade  the  people. 
Cornell  began  in  the  mud  of  a  poor  hill  farm  on 
the  edge  of  a  country  village,  with  a  group  of  boy 
professors,  few  books,  no  traditions,  and  no  achieve- 
ments, its  growth  dependent  on  the  uncertain  will 
of  a  self-governing  commonwealth.  It  thus  started 
far  behind  Berlin  and  was  steadily  losing.  Three  years 
had  passed,  three  laps  in  the  course.  "The  race  is 
on/'  said  Fiske;  "who  bets  on  the  Empire  State?" 

Today  Cornell  has  passed  her  fiftieth  lap,  and  is 
stoutly  forging  ahead ;  her  gains  in  wealth,  prestige, 
influence,  —  most  of  all  in  active  efficiency,  —  are 
above  cavil.'  Already  her  sway  over  the  world  of 
thought  and  action  outranks  that  of  Berlin.  She 
has  no  apology  to  make  to  any  one.  As  for  me, 
I  "bet  on  the  Empire  State!" 

The  severe  limitations  bounding  German  education 
are  shown  in  the  subordination  of  the  university  to 
the  Kultur  system  of  which  it  is  a  part.  Once  at 
Stanford,  discussing  university  organization,  I 
touched  on  the  apparent  anomaly  that  in  America, 
the  land  of  democracy,  a  university  head  has  auto- 
cratic powers,  while  in  Germany,  the  fountain  head 
of  autocracy,  the  Rector  —  as  they  style  him  —  is 

C  85  3 


The  Days  of  a  Man  [1868 

chosen  by  his  fellows  and  has  practically  no  authority, 
whatever  slight  control  he  does  exercise  being  dele- 
gated by  his  colleagues.  These  remarks  of  mine 
came  somehow  to  the  notice  of  Dr.  Rudolf  Virchow, 
the  distinguished  physiologist.  Later,  to  one  of 
my  audience,  Dr.  H.  Rushton  Fairclough,  then  at 
work  at  the  University  of  Berlin,  Virchow  said : 

Autocracy  You  tell  Dr.  Jordan  that  I  think  he  is  mistaken.  No  greater 
in  the  autocracy  exists  in  education  anywhere  than  in  the  Prussian 
German  universities.  But  arbitrary  power  is  vested  in  the  Minister 
university  of  Public  Instruction,  not  in  the  Rector,  who  is  mainly  an 

honorary  figure.     Each  professor  is  regarded  as  an  agent  of 

the  government. 

Sectarian  Through  most  of  the  last  century,  American 
colleges  colleges  had  served  as  agents  for  the  spread  of 
denominational  religion.  Indeed,  it  was  not  an 
uncommon  thing  for  college  presidents  to  plead  that 
if  you  let  your  college  die,  your  church  would  die, 
too.  But  as  many  of  the  collegiate  institutions  were 
quite  imperfectly  endowed,  they  were  not  able  to 
maintain  adequate  standards;  and  while  they 
boasted  that  their  small  numbers  permitted  close 
contact  between  students  and  professors  and  so 
brought  the  young  people  directly  under  moral  and 
religious  influence,  the  very  opposite  was  often  the 
case.  When  teachers  are  few,  ill  trained,  ill  paid, 
and  worn  out,  their  personal  hold  over  youth  may 
be  very  slight.  Dependence  on  fees,  moreover, 
tended  to  laxity  in  regard  to  both  scholarship  and 
behavior,  for  to  dismiss  even  a  single  student  meant 
the  loss  of  needed  money.  And  for  the  purpose  of 
advertising,  many  weak  institutions  boasted  of  their 
attendance,  as  though  relative  worth  could  be 
measured  by  enrollment  merely.  Occasionally,  also, 
C  863 


1 868]      "Free  Must  the  Scholar  Be" 

such  claims  were  dishonest  —  as,  for  instance,  when 
college  catalogues  were  padded  by  including  scholars 
in  a  preparatory  or  grammar  school,  or  (in  one  case 
of  which  I  knew)  even  children  taking  private 
lessons  in  music! 

White  in  his  autobiography  graphically  describes 
his  early  exasperating  experience  at  Hobart  College, 
a  small  denominational  institution  at  Geneva,  New 
York,  from  which  he  went  on  to  Yale ;  but  Hobart, 
with  all  its  patching  and  fitting,  was  by  no  means 
one  of  the  worst  of  its  class.  And  the  gradual  The 
introduction  of  the  elective  system,  however  un-  elective 
welcome,  worked  a  great  change  for  the  better  even  system 
in  such  colleges,  because  it  enabled  the  student  to 
select  the  subjects  he  wanted,  and  especially  the 
men  who  held  his  attention.  Under  the  old  plan 
even  at  Yale,  as  White  so  clearly  shows,  real  teachers 
and  eminent  scholars  worked  at  a  great  disadvantage, 
being  compelled  as  they  were  to  hear  and  mark 
daily  the  recitations  of  "reluctant  students."  To 
condemn  the  elective  system,  therefore,  because  it 
does  not  make  a  scholar  out  of  every  youth  it  touches 
is  to  show  little  conception  of  the  rank  failure  of  the 
old  regime.  Those  who  have  criticized  President 
Eliot's  unreserved  adoption  of  the  new  one  at 
Harvard  forgot  or  never  realized  the  intellectual 
lassitude  among  young  men  submitted  to  a  pre- 
arranged discipline  awakening  no  interest  and  with 
no  visible  relation  to  present  tastes  or  future  career. 
Volition  or  vocation  —  one  or  the  other  —  is  the  Scholars 
backbone  of  all  real  scholarship.  Men  and  women  self-made 
draw  mental  nutriment  only  from  what  their  minds 
assimilate.  Scholars  must  make  themselves,  and 
find  joy  in  the  process. 

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Under  the  old  system  of  prescribed  studies  and 
daily  marking,  the  hurdles  to  be  leaped  during  the 
four  years'  race  consisted  mainly  of  successive  books 
of  Greek,  Latin,  Pure  Mathematics,  and  Philosophy. 
No  wonder  the  lads  who  had  thus  suffered  together 
used  to  meet  at  midnight  to  burn  Euclid  or  the 
Anabasis!  But  do  the  young  fellows  of  today  ever 
burn  their  libraries  of  history,  science,  or  engineering? 

From  the  first  Cornell  Register,  1868-69,  I  quote 
the  following: 

The  idea  of  doing  the  student's  mind  some  vague,  general 
good  by  studies  which  do  not  interest  him,  does  not  prevail. 
The  variety  of  instruction  offered  enables  him  to  acquire  such 
knowledge  as  is  likely  to  agree  with  his  tastes,  encourage  his 
aspirations,  and  promote  his  work  in  life. 

The  general  change  from  prescribed  courses  to  the 
o/      elective   system   led   to   the   enormous   increase   in 
university  attendance  which  began  in  the  '90*8  and 
is  so  conspicuous  at  present. 


When  Cornell  opened,  the  president,  remembering 
the  great  influence  for  good  he  himself  had  derived 
from  the  lectures  of  eminent  scholars,  arranged,  as 
I  have  said,  for  a  series  of  non-resident  professors: 
Agassiz,  Lowell,  George  William  Curtis,  and  Goldwin 
Smith  (who  decided  to  remain  permanently  with  the 
institution) ;  afterward  Bayard  Taylor,  John  Stanton 
Gould,  and  others.  Agassiz,  whom  later  I  came  to 
know  well,  was  there  before  my  arrival;  but  to  all 
the  rest  I  was  privileged  to  listen  as  a  college  student. 

A  more  charming  speaker  than  George  William 
Curtis  I  have  never  heard.  His  was  said  to  be  a 
C  88  3 


18683  Non-resident  Professors 

"silver  tongue,"  and  his  gracious  lectures  on  the  George 
living  writers  of  England,  especially  Thackeray,  wtitia 
Dickens,  and  Carlyle,  made  a  vivid  and  lasting  Curils 
impression.  His  independent  political  stand,  more- 
over, influenced  us  profoundly.  As  a  Republican 
he  courageously  opposed  the  spread  of  the  spoils 
system  in  his  party,  thus  becoming  the  recognized 
leader  in  civil  service  reform.  I  well  remember  his 
saying  at  the  National  Convention  of  1872:  "I  went 
into  this  convention  a  free  man,  with  my  own  head 
under  my  own  hat,  and  a  free  man  I  mean  to  come 
out  of  it!"  That  proclamation  marked  the  breach 
between  "Mugwumps"  and  "straight"  Republicans, 
a  movement  which  led  in  1884  to  the  defeat  of  Elaine 
as  representative  of  the  "Stalwarts,"  or  thick-and- 
thin  partisans. 

Lowell  was  a  broad-shouldered,  energetic,  noble-  James 
looking  man  with  a  bushy,  red-black  beard  and  a  Ru*sfl 
very  pleasant  voice.     But   his  lectures  made  less  Lowett 
impression  on   us  than  those   of  Curtis,   notwith- 
standing the  veneration  in  which  we  all  held  him  — 
chiefly  because  his  topic,  Early  French  Literature, 
dealt  with  less  familiar  subjects. 

Speaking  of  Curtis  and  Lowell  —  close  friends  — 
I  distinctly  recall  two  incidents  which  occurred  soon 
after  my  arrival  at  Cornell.  As  I  walked  one  day 
across  the  fields  beyond  Cascadilla  Creek,  I  spied 
two  men  in  shirt  sleeves  lying  under  a  tree.  Not 
recognizing  either  at  first,  as  their  lectures  had  not 
yet  begun,  I  joined  them  for  a  friendly  chat.  After- 
ward, greatly  elated,  I  went  straight  home  and 
wrote  four  lines  of  verse  (or  what  I  thought  to  be 
verse)  reminiscent  of  Browning's  "And  did  you 
once  see  Shelley  plain?" 

C  89] 


The  Days  of  a  Man  £1869 

Once  in  his  shirt  sleeves  lying  in  the  grass, 
Under  the  shadow  of  a  chestnut  tree, 
I  saw  James  Russell  Lowell  face  to  face, 
And  the  great  poet  rose  and  spoke  to  me!  * 

Not  long  after,  attending  service  at  the  Unitarian 
church,  I  was  ushered  into  the  same  pew  with 
Lowell  —  "a  seat  among  the  gods,"  it  seemed 
to  me. 

Taylor          Bayard  Taylor  gave  a  most  interesting  and  in- 

and         structive  course  on  Early  German  Literature.    An- 

Hug  es     other  delightful  visitor  was  Thomas  Hughes,  author 

of  the  famous  "Tom  Brown"  books.    At  the  Cas- 

cadilla  reception  which  followed  his  address,  I  first 

helped  pass  around  strawberries,  ice  cream,  and  cake, 

after  which  I  put  my  apron  in  my  pocket  and  became 

a  guest. 

In  the  field  of  History  —  which  deeply  interested 
me,  not  as  a  record  of  battles  and  intrigues  but  as 
the  "biography  of  man  "---we  had  excellent  in- 
struction. Ancient  History  was  taught  by  William 
Channing  Russel,  the  vice-president,  whose  lectures 
White's  were  both  effective  and  well  planned.  More  appeal- 
jng  to  me,  however,  were  White's  courses  in  Medieval 
and  Modern  History.  These  covered  particularly 
the  later  years  of  France,  including  the  French 
Revolution;  they  were  accompanied  by  an  exten- 
sive syllabus,  with  bibliography.  White,  as  I  have 
indicated,  used  language  in  a  noble  fashion,  choosing 
words  of  dignity  and  strength,  and  leaving  sentences 
to  linger  in  the  memory.  His  lectures  I  therefore 
took  down  very  fully,  writing  them  out  so  that  the 

1  It  is  hardly  necessary  to  add  that  his  companion  was  George  William 
Curtis. 


1871]  Instruction  in  History 

product   bore    at   least    some    resemblance   to   the 
original,  and  deriving  great  pleasure  in  the  process. 

The  lectures  by  Goldwin  Smith  on  English  History 
were  immensely  helpful.  Because  of  a  sort  of  de-  Smith 
tached  attitude,  he  was  not  as  inspiring  as  White, 
but  his  judgment  and  dignity  of  character  impressed 
us  strongly.  He  was  the  first,  and  for  years  the 
only,  British  Liberal  with  whom  I  came  in  contact. 
During  the  last  of  my  college  course  I  got  well 
acquainted  with  him,  and  we  maintained  an  inter- 
mittent correspondence  until  toward  the  time  of 
his  death  at  Toronto  in  1910.  During  the  Philippine 
War  he  wrote  me  that  he  thought  our  American 
fever  for  imperialism  and  expansion  "contained  a 
very  large  element  of  sheer  vulgarity;  at  bottom, 
the  desire  to  get  in  line  with  the  worst  elements  of 
Europe."  To  all  of  which  I  then  assented,  and  still 
assent. 

As  for  courses  in  American  History,  we  were  not 
so  fortunate,  though  it  was  one  of  White's  cherished 
ideas  that  Cornell  should  take  the  lead  in  that 
branch.  The  high  schools  generally  taught  some- 
thing of  it  in  an  elementary  way,  with  partisan  and 
patriotic  basis,  but  no  college  had  previously  provided 
for  serious  study  of  our  democracy.  In  1871,  there- 
fore, White  selected  Dr.  George  Washington  Greene  George  w 
(grandson  of  General  Nathanael  Greene  of  the  Revo-  Greene 
lutionary  War)  as  professor  of  American  History. 
This  amiable  gentleman  read  his  lectures  in  a  mo- 
notonous voice  and  most  uninteresting  manner. 
Soon  he  was  discovered  to  be  using  a  printed  book, 
his  own  story  of  the  Revolution.  A  few  members  of 
the  class  then  bought  the  text,  and  nobody  paid  any 
further  attention  to  the  reading. 


The  Days  of  a  Man  [1870 

But  as  befits  a  new  institution,  most  of  the  pro- 
fessors were  active  young  men  chosen  with  rare 
judgment  by  our  youthful  president.  Notable 
among  them  were  two  of  Agassiz's  students  at 
Harvard,  C.  Frederick  Hartt  in  Geology  and  Burt 
G.  Wilder  in  Zoology.  Hartt  was  a  most  interesting 
man,  with  rare  quality  as  a  classroom  lecturer  and 
unusual  skill  in  gaining  the  trust  and  affection  of 
Survey  students.  About  1 870,  following  Agassiz's  expe- 
°f  dition  to  Brazil,  Hartt  was  asked  to  take  charge  of 
Brazil  tjie  geoi0g;cai  survey  of  that  country,  a  work  upon 
which  he  entered  with  enthusiasm.  Returning  to 
Ithaca,  he  brought  back  many  fossils  and  other 
materials  for  study;  on  some  undescribed  Brazilian 
brachiopods  which  we  made  out  to  be  of  the  Helder- 
berg  period,  I  got  my  first  experience  in  Paleontology. 
Then  from  among  his  Cornell  students  he  proceeded 
to  organize  an  eager  staff:  Branner,  Rathbun,  and 
Orville  A.  Derby  for  Geology;  Herbert  H.  Smith  for 
Geography ;  and  myself  for  Botany. 

Leaving  again  for  South  America,  accompanied  by 
the  others,  he  arranged  for  me  to  follow  after  gradu- 
ation. I  never  went,  however,  as  his  death  occurred 
not  long  after.  Branner  then  succeeded  him  as 
geologist  of  Brazil  for  about  seven  years,  coming 
back  to  graduate  at  Cornell  and  to  take  part  in  the 
geological  survey  of  Pennsylvania.  From  that 
service  he  was  called  by  me  in  1885  to  the  chair  of 
Geology  at  the  University  of  Indiana.  Rathbun 
also  spent  several  years  in  Brazil;  on  his  return  to 
this  country  he  first  entered  the  United  States 
Fish  Commission,  but  was  afterward  made  assistant 
secretary  of  the  Smithsonian  Institution  and  director 
of  the  United  States  National  Museum,  a  joint 


1870]  Science  ^Teachers 

position  he  retained  up  to  the  time  of  his  death  in 
1918.  Derby  remained  permanently  as  director  of  Derby 
the  Museo  Nacional  in  Rio  de  Janeiro,  where  he 
died  in  1916.  Hartt  used  to  say  that  he  had  made 
at  least  one  great  discovery  in  going  to  Brazil,  and 
that  was  Derby! 

Wilder's  special  interest  concerned  the  comparative  wilder 
anatomy  of  nerve  structures.  Very  methodical, 
though  at  the  same  time  original,  even  unique,  — 
sometimes  to  the  verge  of  eccentricity,  —  he  was 
strongly  opposed  to  competitive  athletics,  to  political 
partisanship,  and  above  all  to  the  use  of  tobacco 
and  alcohol.  He  was  an  excellent  lecturer,  admirably 
clear  and  absolutely  fearless,  and  my  training  with 
him  was  most  valuable.  Our  relation  ripened  into  a 
lifelong  friendship. 

Dr.  Charles  A.  Schaeffer,  professor  of  Chemistry,  Scbaeff 
was  an  excellent  teacher  and  well  liked  by  his  students 
in  spite  of  a  strong  personal  resemblance  (no  doubt 
cultivated)  to  Napoleon  III,  whom  we  cordially 
detested!  For  with  most  other  Americans  of  that 
day,  we  glorified  Bismarck  and  regarded  Napoleon 
as  a  tyrannical  usurper.  Larger  knowledge,  in- 
cluding the  former's  revelation  of  his  shameless 
Ems  telegram,  has  since  shifted  our  point  of  view. 
And  the  initiation  of  the  Great  War  seems  now  but 
a  natural  aftermath  of  Bismarck's  policy  of  "blood 
and  iron."  Schaeffer  afterward  became  university 
dean,  a  position  in  which  he  was  generally  popular 
but  which  he  resigned  to  accept  the  presidency  of 
Iowa  University. 

Another  scholarly  teacher  whose  classes  I  enjoyed  Crane 
was   T.    Frederick   Crane,    instructor   in    Romanic 
Languages,  from  whom  I  acquired  a  reading  knowl- 

C  93  3 


The  Days  of  a  Man  £1870 

edge  of  both  Spanish  and  Italian,  and  whose  friendly 
interest  was  quite  helpful  to  me. 

Albert  N.  Prentiss,  professor  of  Botany,  my  im- 
mediate superior,  was  also  a  very  kind  friend.  In 
my  junior  year  (1871),  at  his  request  I  was  made 
instructor  in  the  department,  a  piece  of  good  fortune 
which  enabled  me  thenceforward  to  pay  all  my 
college  expenses  without  recourse  to  less  congenial 
work.  The  fact  that  I  was  still  an  undergraduate 
and  only  twenty  years  old  caused  the  appointment 
to  be  criticized  by  the  college  journal  at  Yale.  But 
I  was  no  novice  in  dealing  with  the  plants  of  the 
region ;  indeed,  to  speak  frankly,  I  knew  the  Eastern 
flora  better  than  most  professors  of  Botany.  In  my 
classes  were  a  number  of  men  since  distinguished  in 
natural  science,  —  Dudley,  Branner,  Comstock, 
Kellerman,  Lazenby,  Fairchild,  and  Henderson,  — 
besides  others,  Anderson  among  them,  whose  closest 
interests  lay  along  different  lines. 

Botany  I  had  made  my  major  subject,  with 
Geology  and  Zoology  as  what  would  now  be  called 
General  "minors."  But  I  also  elected  all  the  History  courses 
courses  as  wejj  as  ajj  tnose  jn  French,  German,  Spanish,  and 
Italian,  besides  a  brief  course  in  Chinese.  Knowledge 
of  modern  languages  has  always  seemed  to  me 
necessary  to  any  just  view  of  the  modern  world ;  to 
my  original  acquisition,  I  ten  years  later  added 
Norwegian,  which  I  think  one  of  the  most  interesting 
of  all,  as  the  close-shackled  German  is  the  least  so. 
Mathematics  I  followed  through  the  required  courses 
only,  having  no  taste  for  abstract  speculation,  of 
which  the  higher  derivatives  of  Algebra  are  the 
quintessence.  In  Inorganic  Chemistry  I  took  and 
enjoyed  all  that  was  offered,  so  that  Schaeffer 

C943 


1870]  Instruction  in  English 

urged  me  to  become  a  chemist;  of  Physics  but 
little,  however,  as  the  instruction  in  the  latter 
branch  was  discouragingly  bad,  one  teacher  being 
trivial  and  noisy,  his  successor  as  dry  as  a 
bone. 

In  the  English  Literature  courses  I  enjoyed  the 
fine  and  sympathetic  readings  of  Hiram  Corson,  but 
systematic  instruction  had  failed  to  "strike  its 
gait."  As  to  that,  I  well  remember  the  very  first 
lecture  I  heard  at  Cornell.  This  was  by*  Corson's 
predecessor,  Colonel  Homer  B.  Sprague,  then  an 
ambitious  young  man  with  a  fine  war  record  and  the 
special  glory  of  having  escaped  from  Libby  Prison. 
Sprague  began,  "James  Thomson  was  born  at 
Ednam,  near  Kelso  on  the  river  Tweed  in  Rox- 
burgh County,  Scotland,"  continuing  with  further 
details  which  we  faithfully  noted  down.  We  soon 
learned,  however,  that  all  such  matters  were  to  be 
found  in  the  handy  compendium  from  which  they 
were  probably  gleaned. 

Another  of  Sprague's  courses,  it  is  only  fair  to  say, 
was  more  illuminating.  It  dealt  with  word  roots 
which  we  had  to  dig  out  for  ourselves.  Our  first 
task  dealt  with  the  sentence,  "We  do  not  expect 
savage  sarcasm  from  the  apostles." 

As .  to  drill  in  writing  English,  I  got  no  help 
from  classwork,  the  instructors  being  men  who 
had  little  worth  saying,  and  said  that  little  mechan- 
ically. 

The  three  and  a  half  years  I  passed  at  Cornell 
exerted  a  controlling  influence  over  my  whole 
subsequent  career.  My  friendship  with  President 
White  afterward  opened  the  door  to  the  experiences 

C95  3 


The  Days  of  a  Man  £1872 

of  half  a  lifetime  in  California.  Several  of  my  under- 
graduate intimates  became  my  associates  and  co- 
workers  for  more  than  a  quarter  of  a  century.  In 
retrospect,  our  doings  at  "the  Grove/'  in  the  forests 
and  the  gorges  about  Ithaca,  crowd  on  my  mind  so 
that  I  might  go  on  indefinitely  with  incidents  dear 
to  memory.  Somewhere,  however,  a  stop  has  to  be 
made,  and  I  must  pick  my  way  out  into  the  cold 
world.  But  while  closing  this  recital  of  student  days, 
I  shall  here  venture  to  anticipate  some  of  my  other 
relations  to  Alma  Mater. 

Entering  the  university  in  March,  1869,  as  a 
belated  freshman,  I  was  able  in  June  to  pass  all  the 
prescribed  first-year  work  except  that  in  Physiology, 
—  which  I  had  never  studied,  —  so  that  upon  my 
return  the  next  fall  I  was  admitted  as  a  regular 
member  of  the  sophomore  class.  During  the  three 
years  which  followed  I  completed  all  requirements 
for  the  degree  of  Bachelor  of  Science,  besides  about 
two  years  of  advanced  work  in  Botany.  Taking 
this  last  into  consideration,  the  faculty  conferred 
on  me  at  graduation  in  June,  1872,  the  advanced 
Master  degree  of  Master  of  Science  instead  of  the  con- 
°/  ventional  Bachelor's  Degree  received  by  the  rest  of 
^  cjasg  -phis  seemed  to  me  at  the  time  a  perfectly 
natural  thing,  as  I  had  done  all  the  required  work 
for  the  higher  honor;  but  it  was  afterward  voted 
not  to  grant  any  second  degree  within  a  year  after 
that  of  Bachelor  had  been  received.  I  was  thus 
placed,  quite  innocently,  in  the  position  of  being 
the  only  graduate  of  Cornell  to  merge  two  degrees 
into  one. 

My  Master's  thesis,  "The  Wild  Flowers  of  Wyo- 
ming County,"  to  which  I  have  previously  referred, 

C  96  3 


DAVID  STARR  JORDAN  AT  GRADUATION,   1872 


1872]  Degrees  from  Cornell 

was  accompanied  by  botanical  and  soil  maps  and 

an  explanation  of  the  four  or  five  floral  districts 

comprising  that  upland  region  of  glaciated  valleys 

and  moraines.    At  the  formal  Commencement  exer-  Graduation 

cises  I  read  an  essay  entitled  "The  Colors  of  Flowers/' 

The  front  of  the  old  Library  Hall  (of  Ithaca)  being 

crowded  to  the  limit,  it  was  difficult  for  me  —  as 

first  speaker  —  to  get  through  to  the  steps  at  the 

side  of  the  stage.    Passing,  therefore,  from  my  place 

in  the  audience,  I  put  a  hand  on  the  platform  and 

leaped  to  position !  This  direct  method  was,  of  course, 

a  bit  unconventional,  and  when  I  had  finished,  the 

president    signaled   to   me   to   leave   by   means  of 

the   steps  and  thus  return  to  my  seat  as  best  I 

could. 

In  this  connection  I  may  refer  to  the  final  degree  Doctor 
conferred  on  me  by  Cornell,  that  of  Doctor  of  Laws  °f  Laws 
in  1886,  when  I  was  again  unexpectedly  the  recipient 
of  an  unusual  honor.  In  the  original  organization 
of  the  university  White  had  decreed  that  no  honorary 
degrees  should  be  granted.  His  successor,  Dr. 
Charles  Kendall  Adams,  did  not  sympathize  with 
this  restriction,  and  securing  the  assent  of  faculty 
and  trustees,  arranged  to  confer  the  degree  of  LL.D. 
on  Mr.  White  and  on  me.  Meanwhile  a  considerable 
number  of  alumni,  myself  included,  had  filed  a 
protest  against  the  proposed  change  in  policy. 
Both  degrees  were,  however,  publicly  awarded,  not- 
withstanding my  own  absence.  I  then  wrote  im- 
mediately to  Adams,  declining  the  honor;  but  he 
urged  me  to  accept  it  as  a  personal  favor  to  him, 
circumstances  being  what  they  were;  and  thus  the 
matter  stands.  Afterward,  in  deference  to  a  strong 
feeling  among  the  graduates,  the  practice  was  dis- 

C973 


The  Days  of  a  Man  £1887 

continued  before  any  other  honorary  degrees  had 
been  granted.1 

Alumnus  In  1887  it  became  my  privilege  to  serve  Cornell 
trustee  University  in  the  capacity  of  alumnus  trustee.  Mr. 
White  was  the  first  and  natural  choice  of  the  voting 
graduates,  but  it  was  later  arranged  that  the  board 
should  itself  elect  him  to  their  body,  leaving  the 
alumni  to  fix  on  some  one  else  for  the  second  vacancy. 
That  honor  thereupon  fell  to  me,  and  I  was  unani- 
mously chosen  for  the  term  of  five  years. 

The  following  June,  according  to  custom,  I  pre- 
sented a  report  on  the  condition  and  outlook  of  the 
institution.  This  statement  I  had  prepared  with 
much  care;  it  was  received  with  general  favor, 
especially  for  its  educational  philosophy  which 
White  strongly  approved,  as  will  subsequently 
appear. 

As  a  member  of  the  board  when  the  Law  School 
was  founded  in  1887,  I  tried  to  prevent  what  I  felt 
to  be  a  serious  academic  error,  the  adoption  of  the 
low  standards  which  unfortunately  prevailed  for 
some  years.  Judge  Douglas  Boardman,  himself  a 
trustee,  had  been  selected  as  dean,  and  his  ideal 
seemed  to  be  to  reproduce  the  old  Albany  Law 
School,  of  which  he  had  formerly  been  head.  Conse- 
quently, the  committee  engaged  in  organizing  the 
new  department  proposed  to  set  up  practically  no 
conditions  for  admission  beyond  good  moral  charac- 

1  I  still  believe  that  every  academic  degree  should  represent  work  actually 
done  in  or  under  the  direction  of  the  institution  granting  it.  At  the  outset, 
therefore,  I  adopted  at  Stanford  University  the  Cornell  rule  that  no  honorary 
degrees  or  degrees  for  studies  carried  on  in  absentia  should  be  awarded.  This 
regulation  has  saved  us  much  pressure  from  various  quarters.  It  seems  to  me 
to  give  the  university  a  certain  dignity  as  existing  for  purposes  of  instruction, 
not  for  conferring  honors  on  outside  persons. 

C98  3 


1887]  Cornell  Law  School 

ter  and  ability  to  read  and  write,  —  that  is,  the  old  Handicap 
traditional  criteria  for  the  study  of  law.  Against  °fthe 
this  proposition  I  stoutly  protested,  urging  that  LawScbod 
requirements  be  at  least  as  high  as  those  for  ad- 
mission to  the  freshman  class.  But  my  ideas  failed 
of  acceptance,  and  grammar  school  standards  were 
adopted.  After  a  few  years,  however,  the  original 
policy  was  discarded,  entrance  conditions  being  then 
raised  to  the  high  level  obtaining  at  Harvard,  and 
instruction  entrusted  to  professional  teachers  in 
place  of  active  practitioners  in  intermittent  service. 
Nevertheless,  it  was  a  matter  of  years  before  the 
Cornell  Law  School  recovered  from  its  first  handi- 
cap. This  harked  back  to  the  days  when  —  as  was 
said  —  "one  could  walk  from  the  street  into  the 
legal  profession/'  or  to  quote  another  contemporary 
epigram,  "it  required  the  same  preparation  for  the 
Bar  as  for  the  sawbuck."  During  that  period,  a 
young  Indiana  acquaintance  of  mine  entered  on  the 
practice  of  law  with  no  training  beyond  his  experience 
in  avoiding  the  payment  of  a  note  by  pleading 
minority  at  the  time  he  signed  it. 


C99  3 


CHAPTER  FIVE 


Choice  ENTERING  Cornell,  I  had  in  mind  one  or  the  other 
of  two  alluring  callings:  I  would  be  a  botanist  or  a 
Breeder  Of  £ne  sheep.  For  I  was  fascinated  by  the 
classification  and  distribution  of  plants,  and  at  the 
same  time  much  interested  in  the  little  I  knew  of 
breeding  and  heredity,  acquired  partly  from  limited 
reading,  partly  from  experience. 

My  early  interest  in  sheep  never  died  out,  al- 
though my  time  came  to  be  fully  occupied  with  other 
matters.  But,  traveling  through  England,  I  have 
always  been  interested  in  the  development  of  the 
different  breeds  through  segregation  and  isolation, 
each  county  having  even  yet  its  special  kind.  In 
Australia,  also,  I  have  given  some  attention  to  the 
results  of  modern  selective  breeding,  which  provided 
New  South  Wales  with  the  best  merino  or  fine- 
wooled  stock  in  the  world. 

interest  In  connection  with  my  studies  I  had  read  of 
in  distinguished  men  who  had  made  Botany  their  life 
any  work,  and  I  had  exchanged  a  few  letters  with  Asa 
Gray  of  Harvard,  the  most  eminent  botanist  in 
America.  Yet  such  a  career  seemed  almost  un- 
attainable to  an  impecunious  boy  with  no  visible 
prospect  of  extensive  travel,  which  alone  gives  access 
to  new  floras.  On  the  other  hand,  there  were  then 
no  available  means  for  intensive  study  of  plant 
behavior,  as  our  microscopes  were  inadequate,  micro- 
tomes had  not  been  invented,  and  plant  physiology 
was  in  its  infancy.  Moreover,  my  own  botanical 
C  ioo  3 


1872]  Leaving  Cornell 

interests  were  primarily  geographical  and  descriptive. 
I  wished  to  know  plants  as  plants,  and  in  their 
relations  to  environment.  And  while,  as  time  went 
on,  I  acquired  more  confidence  in  my  own  capacity, 
and  came  to  feel  that  I  wanted  to  be  a  teacher  of 
science,  I  was  by  no  means  sure  that  my  chosen 
field  for  research  would  continue  to  lie  in  Botany. 
My  Commencement  essay  (printed  in  the  Cornell 
Era  as  "The  Colors  of  Vegetation")  had  little 
importance  as  an  original  contribution.  My  Master's 
thesis  dealing  with  the  Flora  of  Wyoming  County 
contained  considerable  new  matter  of  local  value, 
though  it  was  never  published.  Toward  Geology 
and  Ornithology  I  had  meanwhile  felt  a  growing 
attraction;  but  Vertebrate  Zoology  was  to  claim 
my  final  allegiance. 

Upon  graduation  in  1872  I  decided  not  to  remain  Professor- 
as  instructor  in  Botany  at  $750  a  year,  accepting  ***>** 
instead  the  $1300  professorship  of  Natural  Science  Lombard 
at  Lombard  University  —  now  Lombard  College  — 
an  institution  under  the  direction  of  the  Universalist 
Church,  located  at  Galesburg,  Illinois.  The  months 
of  July  and  August  I  spent  with  Herbert  Copeland 
at  his  father's  home  in  Monroe,  Wisconsin.  Going 
West  by  way  of  the  Great  Lakes,  I  reached  Chicago 
just  after  the  great  fire  which  left  scarcely  anything 
of  that  once  enterprising  frontier  town.  For  the 
whole  city  had  been  made  up  of  wooden  structures, 
and  the  conflagration,  starting  in  the  overturn  of  a 
lantern  by  a  reckless  cow,  obliterated  everything 
from  what  is  now  the  southern  edge  of  the  business 
district  to  Lincoln  Park  in  the  north. 

While  in  Chicago  I  went  out  to  see  for  the  first 

C  ioi  3 


The  Days  of  a  Man  £1872 

The  «*-  time  an  unbroken  prairie,  and  was  filled  with  delight 
broken  an(j  enthusiasm  over  the  variety  and  novelty  of  the 
praine  piants  which  grew  there.  Once  before,  and  only 
once,  had  I  had  a  chance  at  a  new  flora;  that  was 
in  1871,  at  Niagara  Falls,  when  I  visited  it  with  a 
number  of  other  students.  Around  about  were 
many  plants  which  had  come  from  farther  west, 
their  seeds  having  been  brought  down  by  the  water. 
In  the  autumn  Copeland  went  as  teacher  of 
Natural  Science  to  the  Normal  School  at  White- 
water, Wisconsin,  while  I  proceeded  to  Galesburg. 
On  the  way,  however,  I  attended  at  Dubuque  the 
meeting  of  the  American  Association  for  the  Ad- 
vancement of  Science.  This  society,  holding  its 
national  sessions  once  (and  sometimes  twice)  each 
year,  has  been  an  institution  of  great  value  in  bring- 
ing the  young  workers  in  science  into  the  company  of 
its  established  leaders. 

rbe  At  Dubuque  I  first  met  a  number  of  men  of  whom 

A.A.A.S.  I  had  often  heard  but  with  whom  I  had  not  previ- 
°Dvbu  ue  ous'y  come  into  direct  contact.  Most  prominent 
among  them  was  Gray.  Some  one,  I  remember, 
looked  out  of  the  window  and  said:  "There  goes 
Asa  Gray.  If  he  should  say  that  black  was  white, 
I  should  see  it  already  turning  whitish."  Another 
leading  figure  was  James  Hall,  state  geologist  of  New 
York,  who  had  been  in  our  laboratory  at  Cornell 
and  seen  my  modest  work  on  the  brachiopods  of 
northern  Brazil,  so  strangely  like  similar  shells  from 
the  Helderberg  rocks  about  Albany.  Dr.  J.  P. 
Lesley,  the  geologist,  was  also  conspicuous.  His 
saying  that  "the  college  graduate  may  flourish  his 
diploma,  but  the  world  cares  little  for  that  baby 
badge/'  has  always  lingered  in  my  memory,  as  more 
C  102  ] 


1872]  Meetings  of  American  Scientists 

than  one  generation  of  my  students  can  well  attest. 
Still  another,  not  less  eminent,  was  Dr.  Charles  E. 
Bessey,  botanist  of  the  University  of  Nebraska,  an 
original  teacher  and  a  helpful  friend. 

The  boundless  hospitality  of  the  people  of  Iowa  Guests 
I  remember  with  much  pleasure.     Everywhere  we  °ftbe 
were  received  without  charge,   and  on  Sunday  a  state 
ticket  was  given  each  of  us  by  the  transportation 
companies  to  be  filled  out  for  any  place  in  Iowa 
that  might  attract.     I  myself  selected  a  trip  by 
steamer  down  the  Mississippi  River  to  Burlington. 

Since  then  I  have  attended  several  other  meetings 
of  the  Association,  one  each  at  New  Haven,  Ottawa, 
Boston,  and  Minneapolis.  With  time,  also,  I  saw 
myself  changing  from  an  eager  young  disciple  to  a 
place  among  the  "old  masters"  whom  the  young 
fellows  hope  to  meet,  but  who  scarcely  find  time  and 
strength  to  foregather  each  year. 

At  the  meeting  in  1909  I  was  elected  president  of 
the  Association  for  the  following  year,  an  honor 
never  twice  accorded  to  any  one.  My  presidential 
address,  delivered  at  Minneapolis  in  1910,  was 
entitled  "The  Making  of  a  Darwin."  Professor  Making 
Henry  Fairfield  Osborn  of  Columbia  had  once  °f* 
asserted  that  no  American  university  could  produce 
"a  Darwin";  I  therefore  set  forth  what  seemed  to 
me  the  essential  elements  in  the  making  of  a  great 
naturalist  and  claimed  that  they  were  to  be  found 
as  freely  in  America  as  anywhere  in  Europe.  They 
were,  first,  the  original  human  material;  second, 
contact  with  nature;  third,  an  inspiring  teacher. 
As  to  the  first,  I  argued  that  only  life  can  yield  the 
"stuff"  from  which  great  men  are  made  —  a  matter 
of  heredity,  not  of  geographical  location.  Contact 

C  103  3 


The  Days  of  a  Man  1^1872 

with  nature,  the  second  essential,  is  possible  every- 
where, and  much  more  so  on  this  broad  and  un- 
exhausted continent  than  in  the  fens  of  Cambridge- 
shire. As  to  the  third,  Darwin  explains  his  own 
indebtedness:  he  "walked  with  Henslow,"  deriving 
from  that  vigorous  and  enthusiastic  botanist  the 
determination  to  make  Natural  History  his  life 
work.  Plainly  it  was  not  Cambridge  and  Edin- 
burgh which  made  him.  Indeed,  he  bluntly  affirms 
that  in  his  scientific  career  he  owed  nothing  to 
Cambridge  beyond  his  association  with  Henslow, 
which  was  personal  rather  than  official ;  and  at  Edin- 
burgh he  listened  to  lectures  on  geology  "so  incred- 
ibly dull"  that  he  made  up  his  mind  never  to  attend 
any  more  or  even  read  a  book  on  the  subject! 
Need  of  I  am  sure  that  a  Darwin  could  be  produced  in 
"Darwin  America  just  as  readily  as  anywhere  else.  Once 
secure  the  fortunate  combination  of  inherited  germ 
plasm,  the  necessary  "Darwin  stuff,"  and  the  rest 
is  easy,  for  America  affords  an  exuberance  of  nature 
and  always  a  choice  number  of  Henslows  as  com- 
panions and  interpreters. 

in  Gales-  But  to  return  to  Galesburg,  where,  in  the  month 
Of  September,  1872,  I  arrived  to  begin  my  work. 
Then  only  twenty-one  years  old  and  without  worldly 
experience,  I  was  ignorant  and  more  or  less  scornful 
of  some  of  the  social  duties  supposed  to  be  incumbent 
on  professors.  But  I  worked  very  hard  at  Lombard, 
did  some  excellent  teaching,  and  developed  a  certain 
degree  of  enthusiasm  in  the  small  body  of  students, 
of  whom  there  were  not  over  one  hundred  in  the 
entire  collegiate  department,  with  only  eight  in  the 
graduating  class.  A  number  of  these  young  people, 

C  104  3 


A  Tear  at  Lombard 


however,  had  real  ability  —  among  them  my  sister, 
whom  I  had  asked  to  join  me  for  the  year,  i 

Natural    Science,    I    found,    was    an  expansible    Range  of 
subject.    My  "chair"  demanded  classes  in  Zoology,  Natural 
Botany,  Geology,  Mineralogy,  Chemistry,  Physics,  Science 
Political   Economy,    Paley's   "  Evidences   of   Chris- 
tianity,"  and,   incidentally,   German   and   Spanish! 
I  also  had  charge  of  the  weekly  "literary  exercises," 
consisting  of  orations  and  the  reading  of  essays,  — 
a   dreary   and   perfunctory   performance,  —  with   a 
class  in  Sunday  School  for  good  measure.     In  off 
hours,  also,  I  served  as  pitcher  of  the  student  ball 
team,  taking  part  in  regular  contests  with  our  neigh- 
bor, Knox  College,  another  Galesburg  institution  — 
much  better  endowed  and  only  a  mile  away. 

In  Chemistry  and  Physics  I  had  almost  no  appa- 
ratus, and  nothing  that  could  be  called  a  laboratory 
except  as  I  created  it  —  electrical  instruments  being 
the  only  articles  of  real  value  we  possessed.  For  the 
rest,  we  studied  Botany  in  the  field,  and  the  rich 
fossil  deposits  and  geode  beds  along  the  banks  of 
the  Mississippi  River  I  utilized  to  the  utmost  in 
Geology.  Once  when  the  board  of  trustees  sent  a 
committee  to  inspect  the  work  of  the  faculty,  they 
criticized  my  teaching  solely  on  the  ground  that  "I 
allowed  the  students  to  go  into  the  cabinet  to  handle 
the  apparatus  and  waste  the  chemicals."  And  one  A  "fossil 
of  their  number  felt  a  little  hurt  because  I  regarded  bam" 
with  undisguised  scorn  his  present  of  a  "fossil  ham" 
which  was  merely  a  water-worn  boulder  of  unusual 
shape. 

On  the  whole,  however,  I  valued  the  growing 
enthusiasm  of  my  pupils  more  than  I  did  the  opinion 
of  the  board  of  trustees.  One  matter,  nevertheless, 

C  105  3 


The  Days  of  a  Man  1:1873 

caused  me  a  certain  embarrassment.  My  prede- 
cessor, Dr.  Livingston,  a  man  of  high  character  and 
a  certain  degree  of  executive  ability  but  no  scientific 
training,  had.  been  removed  from  the  professorship 
of  Natural  Science  at  the  age  of  sixty  because  he 
was  thought  inadequate  for  the  labor  of  teaching. 
The  presidency  then  becoming  vacant,  after  con- 
siderable discussion  on  the  part  of  the  board  he  was 
made  acting  head  for  the  time  being.  This  left  his 
relation  to  me  rather  delicate,  and  occasionally 
The  difficult.  On  one  occasion,  for  instance,  he  criticized 
Giadai  my  account  of  the  Glacial  Period  because  I  made  it 
Epocb  appear  "as  though  ice  had  actually  covered  the 
land/'  His  misinformation  on  these  matters  dated 
from  the  period  in  which  glacial  phenomena  were 
attributed  to  icebergs  and  the  wash  of  waves  over 
submerged  regions. 

Leaving  At  the  end  of  the  year  the  trustees,  being  short  of 
Lombard  money  and  none  too  appreciative,  left  me  no  ac- 
ceptable alternative  save  to  resign  —  which  I  did 
not  unwillingly.  They  were,  however,  taken  aback 
by  the  fact  that  nearly  all  the  advanced  students 
then  expressed  'their  intention  of  going  to  Cornell. 
Among  those  who  actually  did  go  were  Edward 
Junius  Edwards,  entomologist,  whom  Mary  after- 
ward married,  and  Belle  Sherman,  who  graduated 
at  Cornell  and  remained  in  Ithaca  for  forty  years  as 
science  teacher  in  the  high  school. 


From  Galesburg  I  went  directly  to  the  island  of 
Penikese  as  one  of  those  chosen  by  Professor  Agassiz 
to  constitute  the  first  class  in  his  proposed  Summer 
C  106] 


scencf 


1873]    The  Anderson  School  at  Penikese 

School  of  Science.  During  the  previous  winter  he  The  first 
had  cast  about  for  some  means  of  coming  in  contact 
with  American  teachers  of  Zoology,  and  so  exerting 
an  influence  toward  better  methods;  for  in  those 
days  science  teaching  in  the  secondary  schools,  even 
in  the  colleges,  was  of  a  very  inferior  order,  without 
laboratories  and  for  the  most  part  lacking  contact 
with  nature  itself.  The  scheme  he  evolved  was  a 
pioneer  movement  in  education.  Up  to  that  time, 
it  will  be  remembered,  nothing  of  the  sort  had  any- 
where existed.  But  he  conceived  the  idea  of  meeting 
teachers  at  the  seaside,  away  from  all  other  influ- 
ences, believing  that  he  could  thus  make  clear  to 
us  the  necessity  of  going  directly  to  nature,  the 
fountain  head  —  thus  teaching  us  to  recognize  the 
truth  as  truth,  to  know  that  there  are  facts  in  the 
universe  which,  as  Huxley  says,  are  "fundamentally 
beyond  denial,  and  to  which  the  tradition  of  a 
thousand  years  is  no  more  than  the  hearsay  of 
yesterday." 

The  first  plan,  as  suggested  by  Professor  Nathaniel 
Southgate  Shaler,  Agassiz's  Harvard  colleague,  was 
to  call  a  group  together  for  a  "scientific  camp  meet- 
ing" on  the  island  of  Nantucket.  Before  a  site  was 
chosen,  however,  Mr.  John  Anderson,  a  wealthy 
tobacco  merchant  of  New  York  City,  offered  the  use 
of  Penikese  supplemented  by  an  endowment  of 
$50,000  in  money  for  the  permanent  location  of 
the  school  there;  and  Mr.  C.  W.  Galloupe  of  Boston 
promised  to  lend  his  large  yacht,  the  Sprite,  for 
dredging  purposes.  Agassiz,  I  may  add,  seldom 
found  difficulty  in  raising  money,  his  personal  enthu- 
siasm being  compelling.  To  this  fact  a  member  of 
the  Massachusetts  legislature  once  bore  testimony: 

C  1073 


The  Days  of  a  Man  £1873 

"I  don't  know  much  about  Agassiz's  Museum,  but 
I  am  not  willing  to  stand  by  and  see  so  brave  a  man 
struggle  without  aid." 

Penikesc,  a  little  forgotten  speck  on  the  ocean, 
about  eighteen  miles  from  New  Bedford,  is  the 
outermost  and  least  of  the  Elizabeth  Islands,  which 
lie  to  the  south  of  Buzzards  Bay,  off  the  heel  of 
Cape  Cod.  It  comprises  some  sixty  acres  of  very 
rocky  ground,  being  indeed  only  a  huge  pile  of 
stones  with  intervals  of  soil.  For  the  whole  cluster 
was  once  a  great  terminal  moraine  of  rocks  and  clay 
brought  down  from  the  mainland  and  dropped  into 
the  ocean  by  some  ancient  glacier,  after  which  the 
mass  was  broken  by  the  wash  into  eight  little  islands 
separated  by  tide  channels: 

Naushon,   Nonamesset,   Uncatena,    and   Wepecket, 
Nashawena,  Pesquinese,  Cuttyhunk,  and  Penikese. 

The  last  of  these  consists  of  two  hills  joined  to- 
gether by  a  narrow  isthmus  with  a  little  harbor  of 
anchorage;  in  June,  1873,  it  bore  a  farmhouse,  a 
flagstaff,  a  barn,  a  willow  tree  by  a  spring,  and  a  flock 
of  sheep.  And  there  was  founded  "  the  Anderson  School 
of  Natural  History,"  for  which  two  new  buildings,  a 
laboratory  and  a  dormitory,  were  duly  provided. 
Choice  From  the  many  hundred  applicants  Agassiz  had 
°f  chosen  fifty  teachers,  students,  and  naturalists  of 
various  grades  and  from  all  parts  of  the  country  — 
thirty-five  men  and  fifteen  women.  The  practical 
recognition  of  coeducation  thus  involved  was  criti- 
cized by  a  number  of  his  friends  brought  up  in  the 
monastic  schools  of  New  England;  but  the  results 
justified  the  innovation.  His  thought  was  that 
those  fifty  teachers,  women  as  well  as  men,  should 

C  108  ] 


1873]  -At  Penikese 


be  trained  in  right  methods,  and  so  carry  back  into 
their  own  schools  sound  ideas  on  the  teaching  of 
science.  Moreover,  each  institution  reached  would 
become  in  time  a  center  of  help  to  others. 

None  of  us  will  ever  forget  his  first  sight  of  Agassiz  First 
as  we  arrived  on  a  little  steamer  from  -New  Bedford  sisht  °f 
in  the  early  morning,  and  he  met  us  at  the  land-  Agasnz 
ing,  his  face  beaming  with  pleasure.    For  this  experi- 
ment might  prove  to  be  his  crowning  work  as  a 
teacher.    His  tall,  robust  figure,  his  broad  shoulders 
bending  a  little  under  the  weight  of  years,  his  large, 
round  face  lit  up  by  kindly,  dark-brown  eyes,  his 
cheery  smile,  the  enthusiastic  tones  of  his  voice, 
his  rolling  gait  —  all  these  entered  into  our  abiding 
impression  of  the  great  naturalist. 

The  dormitory  not  being  yet  finished,  the  whole 
group  was  first  assigned  to  temporary  quarters  in 
the  laboratory,  across  the  middle  of  which  a  partition 
of  robes  and  blankets  had  been  thrown  to  separate 
the  sexes.  Agassiz  then  set  every  one  to  work 
without  delay,  saying  that  we  should  examine  the 
rocks  round  about  and  be  ready  to  tell  him  what  we 
had  seen.  Thereupon  two  of  us,  Dr.  W.  O.  Crosby 
(of  the  Institute  of  Technology)  and  myself,  were 
suddenly  beset  with  questions,  for  we  alone  knew 
something  of  Mineralogy.  "Is  this  hornblende?" 
"Is  this  epidote?"  "How  do  you  tell  them  apart?" 
"How  do  you  know  granite  from  gneiss,  feldspar 
from  quartz?"  But  when  Agassiz  himself  tested  ideas, 
us,  he  neither  asked  nor  answered  questions  of  this  not 
kind;  and  as  for  names,  it  slowly  dawned  on  all 
that  a  name  was  of  little  consequence  until  backed 
by  real  knowledge. 

IT  109  3 


The  Days  of  a  Man  £1873 

The  The  old  barn  had   been  hastily  converted   into 

lecture  dining  hall  and  lecture  room  by  turning  out  the 
sheep,  making  over  the  horse  stalls  into  a  kitchen, 
and  putting  in  a  new  floor,  though  doors  and  walls 
were  left  unchanged  and  the  swallows'  nests  re- 
mained under  the  eaves.  In  the  middle  of  the  big 
room  stood  three  long  tables;  at  the  head  of  one 
sat  Agassiz,  always  with  a  blackboard  at  his  right, 
for  he  seldom  spoke  without  a  piece  of  chalk  in 
hand,  and  frequently  gave  an  entertaining  lecture 
at  table,  often  about  some  fish  or  other  creature  the 
remains  of  which  lay  on  our  plates.  From  one  of 
these  talks  I  made  my  first  acquaintance  with  the 
bones  of  the  Scup. 

Mrs.  Agassiz,  whose  genial  personality  did  much 
to  bind  the  company  together,  was  present  at  every 
lecture,  notebook  in  hand.  Among  the  teachers 
were  Dr.  Burt  G.  Wilder,  one  of  my  former  Cornell 
professors,  Edward  S.  Morse,  Alpheus  S.  Packard, 
Alfred  Mayer,  Frederick  W.  Putnam  —  all  young 
men  of  growing  fame;  Arnold  Guyot,  also,  and 
Count  Louis  de  Pourtales,  early  associates  and 
lifelong  friends  of  Agassiz. 

Agassi^ s  Our  second  day  upon  the  island  was  memorable 
purpose  above  all  others  for  the  striking  incident  recorded 
by  Whittier  in  "The  Prayer  of  Agassiz/'  Breakfast 
over,  Agassiz  arose  and  spoke,  as  only  he  could  speak, 
of  his  purpose  in  calling  us  together.  The  swallows 
flew  in  and  out  of  the  building  in  the  soft  June  air. 
Some  of  them  grazed  his  shoulder  as  he  dwelt  with 
intense  earnestness  on  the  needs  of  the  people  for 
truer  education  —  needs  that  could  be  met  by  the 
training  and  consecration  of  devoted  teachers.  This 
was  to  him  no  ordinary  school,  he  said,  still  less  a 

C 


LOUIS  AGASSIZ,  ABOUT  1857 


1873]  The  Prayer  of  Agassi* 

mere  summer's  outing,  but  a  missionary  work  of 
the  highest  importance. 

A  deep  religious  feeling  permeated  his  whole  The 
discourse,  for  in  each  natural  object  he  saw  "a 
thought  of  God"  which  the  student  may  search  out  ofGod 
and  think  over  again.  But  no  reporter  took  down 
his  words,  and  no  one  could  call  back  the  charm  of 
his  manner  or  the  impressiveness  of  his  zeal.  At 
the  end  he  said,  —  with  a  somewhat  foreign  phras- 
ing, —  "I  would  not  have  any  one  to  pray  for  me 
now":  adding,  when  he  realized  our  failure  to  grasp 
his  meaning,  that  each  would  frame  his  own  prayer 
in  silence. 

Even  the  careless  heart  was  moved, 
And  the  doubting  gave  assent 
With  a  gesture  reverent 
To  the  Master  well  beloved. 

As  thin  mists  are  glorified 
By  the  light  they  cannot  hide, 
All  who  gazed  upon  him  saw, 
Through  its  veil  of  tender  awe, 

How  his  face  was  still  uplit 
By  the  old  sweet  look  of  it, 
Hopeful,  trustful,  full  of  cheer 
And  the  love  that  casts  out  fear. 

Nevertheless,  there  were  among  us  some  young  "Giving 
fellows  from  Harvard  and  Amherst  who  failed  to  Agassi 
appreciate  the  significance  of  Agassiz's  high  purpose,  alesson 
and  promptly  determined  to  show  their  disapproval 
of  coeducation  by  "giving  the  Professor  a  lesson!" 
Accordingly,  after  a  night  or  two,  they  threw  over 
into  the  women's  quarters  a  huge  doll  baby  fashioned 
from  a  pillow  and  blanket.     This  produced  some 

C  in  3 


The  Days  of  a  Man  £1873 

commotion,  and  in  the  morning  Agassiz  was  dis- 
tinctly stern.  At  breakfast  he  rose  and  said  that 
six  young  men  (whose  names  he  gave)  would  leave 
by  the  steamer  at  ten  o'clock.  Various  appeals 
were  now  made:  "the  women  didn't  mind  it"  — 
"it  was  only  a  student  prank  and  had  no  signifi- 
cance." But  he  remained  firm.  We  were  there  for 
serious  purpose,  he  said;  it  was  not  the  place  or 
time  for  "pranks." 

First  The  third  day  I  was  one  of  those  chosen  for  the 

dredging  first  dredging  trip,  on  which  we  secured  many 
creatures  from  sea  bottom,  quite  new  to  us.  At  the 
same  time  we  learned  something  of  the  discomfort 
possible  in  an  unballasted  schooner  anchored  to  a 
dredge  in  the  open  ocean ;  but  with  longer  experience 
I  managed  to  master  the  situation.  Among  inter- 
esting later  trips  on  the  Sprite,  we  visited  the  island 
of  No  Man's  Land,  far  out  at  sea  and  inhabited  by 
a  few  fishermen  whose  outlook  was  wholly  different 
from  ours. 


So  the  summer  went  on  through  a  succession  of 
thf .  .  j°y°us  mornings,  beautiful  days,  and  calm  nights, 
optimist  wjtji  tjie  jy[aster  aiwayS  present,  always  ready  to 

help  and  encourage,  and  the  contagious  enthusiasm 
which  surrounded  him  like  an  atmosphere  never 
lacking.  A  born  optimist/ his  strength  lay  largely 
in  a  realization  of  the  value  of  the  present  moment. 
He  was  a  living  illustration  of  Thoreau's  aphorism 
that  "there  is  no  hope  for  you  unless  the  bit  of  sod 
under  your  feet  is  the  sweetest  in  this  world  —  in 
any  world." 

C  1123 


1873]  Agassis?  s  Lectures 

Of  all  his  varied  lectures  the  most  instructive 
were  those  on  glaciers.  Here  he  spoke  as  an  expert, 
and  every  rock  around  was  witness  to  his  words. 
Equally  delightful,  however,  were  the  reminiscences 
of  his  early  life  and  of  his  fellow  workers  in  science, 
Schimper  and  Braun  in  Munich,  Valenciennes  and 
the  rest  in  Paris,  and  the  three  he  acknowledged  as 
masters  —  Cuvief,  Humboldt,  and  Dollinger.  "I 
lived  at  Munich  for  three  years  under  Dr.  Dollinger's 
roof/'  he  said,  "and  my  scientific  training  goes  back 
to  him,  and  to  him  alone." 

To  the  Darwinian  theory  as  it  looked  to  him  he  Not  a 
was  most  earnestly  opposed.  Essentially  an  idealist,  Darwinian 
he  regarded  all  his  own  investigations  not  as  studies 
of  animals  and  plants  as  such,  but  as  glimpses  into 
the  divine  plans  of  which  their  structures  are  the 
expression.  "That  earthly  form  is  the  cover  of  the 
spirit  was  to  him  a  truth  at  once  fundamental  and 
self-evident."  To  his  mind,  also,  divine  ideas  were 
especially  embodied  in  animal  life,  the  species  being 
the  "thought  unit."  The  marvel  of  structural 
affinity  —  unity  of  plan  —  in  creatures  of  widely 
diverse  habits  and  outward  appearance  he  took  to 
be  simply  a  result  of  the  association  of  ideas  in  the 
divine  mind.  To  Darwin,  on  the  other  hand,  those 
relations  illustrated  the  tie  of  'a  common  heredity 
acting  under  diverse  conditions  of  environment. 

Yet  Agassiz  had  no  sympathy  with  the  prejudices 
exploited  by  weak  and  foolish  men  in  opposition  to 
Darwin's  views.  He  believed  in  the  absolute  freedom 
of  science,  and  that  no  authority  whatever  can 
answer  beforehand  the  questions  we  endeavor  to 
solve  —  an  attitude  strikingly  evidenced  by  the 
fact  that  every  one  especially  trained  by  him  after- 

C  "3  1 


The  Days  of  a  Man  £1873 

ward  joined  the  ranks  of  the  evolutionists.  For  he 
taught  us  to  think  for  ourselves,  not  merely  to 
follow  him.  Thus,  though  1  accepted  his  philosophy 
regarding  the  origin  and  permanence  of  species 
when  I  began  serious  studies  in  Zoology,  as  my  work 
went  on  their  impermanence  impressed  me  more  and 
more  strongly.  Gradually  I  found  it  impossible  to 
believe  that  the  different  kinds  of  animals  and 
plants  had  been  separately  created  in  their  present 
My  forms.  Nevertheless,  while  I  paid  tribute  to  Darwin's 
accept-  marvelous  insight,  I  was  finally  converted  to  the 
tneory  °f  divergence  through  Natural  Selection  and 
other  factors  not  by  his  arguments,  but  rather,  by 
the  special  facts  unrolling  themselves  before  my 
own  eyes,  the  rational  meaning  of  which  he  had 
plainly  indicated.  I  sometimes  said  that  I  went 
over  to  the  evolutionists  with  the  grace  of  a  cat 
the  boy  "leads"  by  its  tail  across  the  carpet! 

All  of  Agassiz's  students  passed  through  a  similar 
experience,  and  most  of  them  came  to  recognize 
that  in  the  production  of  every  species  at  least  four 
elements  were  involved  —  these  being  the  resident 
or  internal  factors  of  heredity  and  variation,  and 
the  external  or  environmental  ones  of  selection  and 
segregation. 

In  the  original  Penikese  group,  the  man  who  most 
interested  me  was  William  Keith  Brooks,  then 
occupying  a  precarious  professorship  in  a  little 
college  at  Niagara  Falls.  Very  wise  and  self-con- 
tained, he  was  especially  sparing  of  words  and  keen 
in  all  his  conclusions.  Later,  as  professor  in  Johns 
Hopkins  University,  he  came  to  be  the  most  dis- 
tinguished American  biologist  of  his  time,  a  true 

C 


1873]  Students  at  Penikese 

"Sage  in  Science,"  as  I  termed  him  in  a  review  of 
one  of  his  books.  Once  I  called  at  his  office  and 
found  him  tracing  the  anatomy  of  a  worm.  "Hello, 
Jordan,"  he  said  cordially,  and  then  returned  to  his 
drawing  as  coolly  as  though  we  had  last  met  within 
half  an  hour  instead  of  years  before.  That  was  his 
way.  Yet,  notwithstanding  his  reticence,  he  was 
really  a  good  friend,  a  very  interesting  lecturer,  and 
a  most  successful  teacher. 

Charles  O.  Whitman  was  older  than  most  of  the  Future 
rest  at  Penikese.  There  his  main  interest  was  haders 
Ornithology,  of  which  he  seemed  to  have  an  ex-  ™cience 
tensive  knowledge.  Afterward  he  rose  to  the  front 
in  General  Biology,  becoming  professor  of  Zoology 
in  the  University  of  Chicago.  The  latter  part  of 
his  life  he  devoted  to  the  breeding  of  birds,  with  a 
view  to  defining  more  explicitly  lines  of  heredity, 
determination  of  sex,  and  the  meaning  of  "unit 
characters."  Another  delightful  member  of  the 
group  was  Dr.  Frank  H.  Snow,  then  professor  of 
Zoology  at  the  University  of  Kansas,  afterward 
head  of  the  same  institution.  Snow  was  an  excellent 
naturalist,  simple,  hearty,  and  jocund,  much  beloved 
by  his  students,  and  (even  when  chancellor)  by  his 
associates.  Charles  Sedgwick  Minot,  bent  on  perfect- 
ing himself  through  training  in  Germany,  was  the 
youngest  and  one  of  the  ablest  of  us  all.  As  pro- 
fessor of  Physiology  at  Harvard  he  came  to  stand 
unquestionably  in  the  front  rank  of  American  men 
of  science.  I  remember  a  keen  saying  of  his,  "The 
difference  between  a  scientific  physician  and  a 
practical  one  is  that  more  of  the  scientific  patients 
get  well  and  more  of  the  others  die."  Walter  Faxon 
of  Harvard,  an  assiduous  student  of  crabs  and 


The  Days  of  a  Man  [1873 

lobsters,  J.  W.  Fewkes,  ethnologist,  and  W.  O.  Crosby, 
mineralogist,  were  also  students  of  promise. 

Samuel  Garman,  assistant  in  the  Museum  of 
Comparative  Zoology  and  general  helper  to  Agassiz, 
was  a  conspicuous  figure,  being  then  a  breezy  young 
fellow  with  wide  sombrero  and  flowing  red  necktie, 
who  had  recently  returned  from  an  expedition  to 
the  Upper  Missouri,  where  he  was  associated  with 
Marsh  and  Cope.  He  became  a  leading  authority 
on  sharks  and  remained  for  more  than  fifty  years 
in  the  Museum,  settling  down  there  into  a  quiet 
and  gray  old  age. 

Success-  All  the  persons  mentioned  above  were  hoping  to 
ful  become  leaders  in  science.  Others  were  equally 
ambitious  to  be  useful  as  teachers.  Among  the 
latter,  Lydia  W.  Shattuck,  professor  of  Botany  at 
Mount  Holyoke,  was  a  great  favorite,  as  was  also 
her  assistant,  Susan  Bowen,  who  in  1875  became 
my  wife.  Other  successful  teachers  were  Susan 
Hallowell,  first  professor  of  Biology  at  Wellesley 
College,  Austin  C.  Apgar,  bird  enthusiast  at  the 
Trenton  Normal  School,  J.  G.  Scott  of  the  Westfield 
Normal,  Franklin  W.  Hooper,  afterward  director  of 
the  Brooklyn  Art  Institute,  H.  H.  Straight  of  the 
Oswego  Normal,  Mary  Beaman  of  Binghamton, 
now  Mrs.  Joralemon,  and  Zella  Reid,  now  Mrs. 
Cronyn,  a  pupil  of  Horace  Mann  at  Antioch  College, 
Yellow  Springs,  Ohio.  Years  afterward  (for  old 
times'  sake,  I  suppose)  Mrs.  Cronyn  sent  her  two 
sons  from  Massachusetts  to  study  under  me  at 
Stanford  University. 

Agassiz  was  destined  not  to  meet  with  us  a 
second  time,  for  he  died  in  December,  1873.  In  the 

C  "63 


18743   The  Second  Summer  at  Penikese 

words    of   Colonel    Theodore    Lyman,    one    of   his  Death  of 
earliest  and  ablest  students,  they  Agassi* 

.  .  .  buried  him  from  the  chapel  that  stands  among  the 
College  elms.  The  students  laid  a  wreath  of  laurel  on  his  bier, 
and  their  manly  voices  sang  a  requiem.  For  he  had  been  a 
student  all  his  life  long,  and  when  he  died  he  was  younger 
than  any  of  them. 

His  headstone  at  Mount  Auburn  is  a  boulder 
brought  from  the  glacier  of  the  Lauter  Aar,  on  which, 
when  professor  at  Neufchatel,  he  had  built  a  rude 
hut  in  order  to  study  the  movement  of  ice.  In  that 
tiny  "Hotel  des  Neufchatelois,"  famed  among  ge- 
ologists, he  once  told  me,  he  "slept  on  the  ice  for 
six  weeks  and  had  ever  since  suffered  from  rheuma- 
tism in  the  right  shoulder.5' 

The  following  summer  we  gathered  again  at 
Penikese  under  the  general  direction  of  Alexander 
Agassiz  and  Wilder.  Eager  new  faces  now  appeared, 
among  them  my  Cornell  intimates,  Copeland  and 
Dudley,  Cornelia  M.  Clapp,  for  many  years  a 
professor  at  Mount  Holyoke,  my  sister  Mary,  and 
Helen  Bingham  (sister  of  Mrs.  Copeland),  who  had 
succeeded  me  at  Lombard.  Wise  teachers  were 
present  as  before,  the  work  was  stimulating  —  but  a 
sense  of  loss  was  felt  above  everything  else.  One  Memorial 
evening,  therefore,  we  met  in  the  lecture  hall,  and  service 
each  spoke  as  best  he  could  of  the  absent  Master. 
The  words  which  longest  remained  with  us  were 
those  of  Samuel  Carman : 

He  was  the  best  friend  that  ever  student  had. 

On  the  walls  we  put  several  mottoes  taken  from 
Agassiz's  talks  to  us: 

C 


The  Days  of  a  Man  [[1874 

STUDY   NATURE,    NOT   BOOKS 

BE    NOT  AFRAID   TO    SAY,    "l    DO    NOT    KNOW" 
STRIVE    TO    INTERPRET   WHAT   REALLY    EXISTS 

A    LABORATORY    IS    A    SANCTUARY   WHICH    NOTHING 
PROFANE    SHOULD    ENTER 

These  striking  phrases,  written  on  cloth,  were  left 
for  fifteen  years  in  the  empty  building,  whence 
they  were  then  carried  by  my  student  Eigenmann 
(of  whom  more  later)  to  the  Marine  Station  at 
Woods  Hole,  in  some  degree  the  natural  successor 
of  Penikese. 

Anderson  With  the  end  of  the  second  summer  —  that  of 
School  ^-^  —  the  Anderson  School  closed  forever.  There 
was  nothing  to  do  except  pay  the  debts  and  shut 
the  doors.  Agassiz  being  gone,  even  the  small  sum 
necessary  to  carry  on  the  work  could  nowhere  be 
obtained.  In  the  eyes  of  the  business  man  for 
whom  it  was  named,  the  venture  was  a  failure.  For 
nearly  twenty  years,  therefore,  the  buildings  stood 
just  as  we  left  them,  in  the  charge  of  Captain 
Flanders,  who  was  drowned  in  a  storm  in  the  winter 
of  1891.  A  year  or  two  later  they  were  struck  by 
lightning  and  burned  to  the  ground,  leaving  the 
island  once  more  to  the  old  farmhouse,  the  barn, 
the  willow  by  the  spring,  and  a  flock  of  sheep. 

But  while  Penikese  is  deserted,1  the  impulse 
which  came  from  Agassiz's  work  there  still  lives, 
and  is  deeply  felt  in  every  field  of  American  science. 
For  with  all  due  appreciation  of  the  rich  streams 

1  This  word  I  retain  advisedly,  even  though  the  state  of  Massachusetts  for 
a  time  made  the  island  a  refuge  for  lepers,  j 

r. 


1874]    Studies  in  Seaweeds  and  Fishes 

which  in  later  years  have  flowed  from  many  quarters,  influence 
it  is  still  true  that  the  school  with  most  extended  °f 
influence  on  scientific  teaching  in  America  was  held  Pemkese 
in  an  old  barn  on  a  little  offshore  island.    It  lasted 
only  a  few  months,  and  it  had  virtually  but  one 
teacher.     When  he  died,  it  vanished ! 


At  Penikese  I  devoted  myself  chiefly  to  the  study  Alga: 
of  Algae,  making  in  all  a  large  collection  of  seaweeds.  and 
This  interest  led  Agassiz  to  appoint  me  instructor 
in  marine  botany  for  the  second  summer.  Toward 
the  end  of  the  first  session,  however,  he  asked  me 
to  undertake  a  study  of  the  fishes  of  the  region, 
and  I  was  accordingly  put  in  charge  of  the  schooner 
Nina  Aiken,  Captain  Flanders.  Every  morning 
early  we  started  out  to  see  the  raising  of  the  pound 
nets  (stationary  traps  for  fishes)  at  Mememsha 
Bight  on  Marthas  Vineyard,  near  the  gaudily 
colored  orange  and  white  promontory  of  Gay  Head. 
Here  I  made  my  first  acquaintance  with  fishes  of 
the  sea,  which  were  brought  up  in  bewildering  variety. 
It  then  became  my  duty  to  select  those  which  I 
thought  would  be  useful  in  the  Museum  of  Com- 
parative Zoology,  and  to  study  the  habits  of  the 
different  kinds.  Meanwhile  I  prepared  and  soon 
after  published  (1874)  "A  Key  to  the  Marine  Algae 
of  the  Atlantic  Coast  from  Newfoundland  to  Florida," 
including  a  list  of  all  the  known  species ;  like  most 
papers  of  that  type,  it  was  useful  mainly  to  the 
author,  and  as  a  point  of  departure  for  future  study. 
But  my  removal  to  the  Middle  West  checked  for 
the  time  being  any  further  work  along  that  line,  and 

C  "93 


The  Days  of  a  Man  ^1874 

I  never  again  returned  to  it.  Having  sold  all  my 
seaweed  books  to  a  second-hand  dealer,  I  found  to 
my  pleasure  in  1892  that  Dudley  had  bought  them 
and  brought  them  with  him  to  Stanford  University. 
A  cdi  to  At  the  end  of  the  first  summer  I  went  over  to 
Wisconsin  Cambridge,  where  Agassiz  had  promised  me  an 
appointment  as  curator  of  fossil  vertebrates  in  the 
Museum,  a  position  which  had  recently  become 
vacant.  Meanwhile  he  received  a  letter  from  Dr. 
Russell  Z.  Mason  of  Appleton,  Wisconsin,  asking 
him  to  send  one  of  his  students  as  principal  of  the 
Appleton  Collegiate  Institute,  a  preparatory  school 
developed  on  the  theories  of  Pestalozzi  and  Froebel, 
in  which  science  teaching  was  to  be  made  a  specialty. 
From  Agassiz's  answer  nominating  me  for  the  po- 
sition I  was  allowed  to  copy  a  few  sentences  which, 
after  all  these  intervening  years,  I  may  be  pardoned 
for  printing: 

The  highest  recommendation  I  can  give  Mr.  Jordan  is  that 
he  is  qualified  for  a  curatorship  in  the  Museum  of  Com- 
parative Zoology.  I  know  no  other  young  man  of  whom  I 
can  say  that. 

This  statement  was  sufficient,  and  I  at  once  set 
forth  for  Appleton  to  undertake  my  new  duties. 

students         I  do  not  think  that  my  management  of  the  Insti- 
at  tute  was  of  a  high  order,  for  I  was  then  only  twenty- 

two  years  old  and  lacked  adequate  executive  experi- 
ence. But  my  teaching  was  excellent,  and  I  have 
never  known  a  more  enthusiastic  body  of  young 
people.  One  of  the  boys,  Charles  Leslie  McKay, 
who  followed  me  to  Indiana,  developed  real  scientific 
ability,  being  afterward  sent  by  Professor  Baird  of 

C  1203 


1874]      Appleton  Collegiate  Institute 

the  Smithsonian  Institution  to  Alaska  to  make 
collections  in  Natural  History  and  Ethnology,  and 
to  study  the  Aleuts.  From  headquarters  at  Nushagak 
on  Bristol  Bay,  he  sent  back  valuable  material, 
including  a  new  species  of  Snow  Bunting.  One 
stormy  night,  however,  he  started  to  cross  the 
turbulent  Nushagak  River  in  a  skin  bidarka,  and 
was  never  seen  again.  In  his  death,  science  suffered 
a  distinct  loss. 

In  Appleton  I  soon  met  an  unusual  woman  whose  A 
friendship  in  that  year  of  my  apprenticeship  formed 
later,  in  California,  a  curious  link  with  the  most 
vital  part  of  my  career  as  a  teacher.  This  was 
Mary  Frazer  Macdonald  from  Inverness,  Scotland, 
a  slender,  energetic,  fiery  little  Highlander,  a  devoted 
feminist  and  suffragist,  with,  moreover,  a  wide 
knowledge  of  literature.  Elaborately  educated  in 
Germany  as  a  kindergarten  teacher,  she  had  been 
called  directly  to  Appleton  at  the  opening  of  the 
Collegiate  Institute.  Arriving  there,  she  learned 
with  dismay  that  her  salary  of  $1000  (which  looked 
large  when  expanded  into  German  marks)  was  less 
than  that  paid  to  the  principal  then  in  charge,  a 
man  distinctly  her  inferior.  Because  of  this  dis- 
crimination, which  she  thought  unfair,  she  resigned 
at  the  end  of  the  first  year,  remaining,  however,  in 
town  for  a  few  more  months,  during  which  period 
she  became  much  interested  in  my  scientific  work 
and  occasionally  dropped  into  my  classes. 

About  Appleton,  algae  were  few  and  insignificant,  Turning 
and  I  had  no  microscope  adequate  for  their  study,  to 
while  fishes  were  abundant  and  varied  in  Fox  River  fis  e 
and  the  neighboring  lakes  of  Winnebago  and  Buttes 
des  Morts.     With  Miss  Macdonald's  assistance  I 


The  Days  of  a  Man  1^1874 

dissected  all  the  available  fish  forms  and  made 
anatomical  drawings  of  them.  During  the  winter 
she  secured  a  position  as  teacher  in  a  San  Francisco 
kindergarten  founded  by  Mrs.  Sarah  B.  Cooper  — 
a  prominent  local  figure  in  the  social  and  educational 
circles  of  that  period  —  and  later  endowed  by  Mrs. 
"Story of  Leland  Stanford.  There  it  happened  that  one  day 
a  stone"  jyjj§s  Macdonald  related  to  her  young  charges 
"The  Story  of  a  Stone,"  which  she  heard  me  give 
in  Appleton  before  my  class  in  Geology.  On  that 
occasion  Charles  McKay  had  brought  in  and 
questioned  me  about  a  bit  of  Favosites,  a  fossil 
Silurian  coral  having  almost  exactly  the  appearance 
of  honeycomb,  which  he  had  picked  up  in  glacial 
drift.  With  this  as  a  text,  I  set  forth  the  growth 
of  the  coral,  covering  at  the  same  time  in  simple 
language  the  geological  history  of  Wisconsin  from 
the  Silurian  down.  I  may  here  add  that  afterward, 
under  the  title  already  mentioned,  my  little  story 
appeared  in  St.  Nicholas,  from  which  it  was  widely 
copied  in  both  America  and  England.  It  was  the 
first  in  date  of  all  the  "nature  stories"  for  children, 
of  which  so  many  have  been  written  in  recent  years 
by  naturalists  —  and  others. 

rhf  Among  Miss  Macdonald's  pupils  was  young  Leland 

sequel  Stanford  Junior,  who  took  sufficient  interest  in 
Favosites  to  repeat  its  history  at  home.  The  matter 
made  a  strong  impression  on  his  father  as  an  illus- 
tration of  how  science  can  be  effectively  taught  to 
children.  Many  years  afterward,  when  I  was  pres- 
ident of  Stanford  University  founded  in  memory 
of  the  little  lad  who  had  liked  "The  Story  of  a 
Stone,"  the  "Governor,"  as  he  was  still  affection- 
ately called,  spoke  to  me  of  the  incident.  We  were 
C  122] 


1874]      Appleton  Collegiate  Institute 

then  both  surprised  and  pleased  —  I  to  learn  that 
even  indirectly  the  boy's  life  had  touched  mine, 
he  to  know  that  the  story  was  of  my  making.  I  also 
recall  with  pleasure  the  admiration,  almost  vener- 
ation, of  both  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Stanford  for  the  edu- 
cational ideals  and  personality  of  Agassiz,  who  was 
once  their  guest  in  San  Francisco.  As  a  matter  of 
fact,  when  the  large  Zoology  Building  (now  Jordan 
Hall)  was  erected,  a  marble  statue  of  Agassiz  of  tanford 
heroic  size  was  one  of  the  two  placed  over  the  portal, 
the  other  being  that  of  his  patron  and  associate, 
Humboldt. 

But  to  return  for  a  moment  to  Miss  Macdonald, 
or  rather  to  Mrs.  David  McRoberts,  for  such  she 
became  a  year  or  two  after  her  arrival  in  San  Fran- 
cisco, where  her  husband,  a  Scot,  was  for  a  time  on 
the  staff  of  the  Call.  Shortly  after  their  marriage, 
however,  Mr.  McRoberts  was  appointed  reporter 
for  the  House  of  Commons,  and  they  settled  down 
in  Chelsea.  After  some  years  they  returned  for  a 
time  to  San  Francisco,  Mrs.  McRoberts  taking  a 
leading  part  in  the  local  suffrage  campaign.  Later 
still  they  went  to  the  mining  district  of  North 
Australia  in  search  of  a  fortune,  and  from  there, 
about  1900,  McRoberts  wrote  me  of  the  sudden 
death  of  his  brilliant  wife. 

With  the  end  of  my  one  year  at  Appleton  the 
Collegiate  Institute  ceased  to  exist,  although  founded 
but  three  years  before  by  Mr.  Anson  Ballard,  an 
enthusiast  in  education,  who  at  his  death  endowed 
it  with  considerable  real  estate.  The  financial 
panic  of  that  period,  however,  punctured  land 
booms,  and  the  property  proved  quite  unsalable. 

C  123  3 


The  Days  of  a  Man  £1874 

In  June,  1874,  therefore,  the  trustees  perforce 
(though  reluctantly)  closed  the  school,  paid  off  all 
the  teachers,  and  turned  the  building  over  to  the 
neighboring  Lawrence  University,  an  institution 
under  the  control  of  the  Methodist  Episcopal 
Church.  This  necessity  was  a  matter  of  real  regret 
to  Mrs.  Ballard  and  her  daughter  Leda,  —  now  Mrs. 
Clark,  —  as  well  as  to  others  who  had  faith  in 
advanced  theories  of  education. 

The  last  day,  after  the  closing  exercises,  we  all 
went  together  in  a  great  four-horse  coach  on  a 
picnic  to  Lake  Winnebago.  Having  planned  to 
take  the  evening  train  to  Chicago,  I  was  obliged 
to  leave  before  the  rest.  The  students  then  suddenly 
decided  to  give  me  a  farewell  greeting  at  the  station 
of  Menasha,  five  or  six  miles  away.  They  started  off 
joyously,  but  coming  to  Fox  River  between  Neenah 
and  Menasha,  they  were  held  up  and  forced  to  pay 
a  fine  of  five  dollars  for  fast  driving  over  a  bridge. 

Forty-two  years  later  I  revisited  Appleton.  Of 
^^  sjx  gjrjs  wjlo  kacj  been  members  of  the  graduat- 
ing class,  one  —  Annie,  the  gifted  daughter  of  Dr. 
Mason  —  had  passed  away,  one  had  removed  to 
Oregon,  and  four  (including  Mrs.  Clark)  were  still 
living  in  town,  happily  married  and  apparently 
prosperous.  The  afternoon  before  my  lecture  they 
gave  me  a  charming  tea  and  reception  in  memory 
of  old  times. 

'5 

Of  the  summer  months  of  1874  passed  by  me  at 
Penikese  I  need  not  again  speak.  At  their  close, 
however,  I  took  advantage  of  another  opportunity 
to  extend  my  scientific  acquaintance  and  experience. 

C  124] 


DAVID  STARR  JORDAN,   1874 


18743    Laboratory  of  the  Fish  Commission 

The  year  before,  Baird  had  provisionally  es-  Woods 
tablished  a  research  station  at  Woods  Hole  on  the 
southern  angle  of  Cape  Cod.  The  location  proved 
to  be  an  excellent  one,  much  superior  to  Penikese 
as  a  collecting  ground,  because  of  a  variety  of  con- 
ditions favorable  to  animal  life  —  shallow  water, 
deep  water,  and  brackish  estuaries  being  accessible. 
Its  nearness  to  Boston  is  also  a  desirable  factor,  as 
seclusion,  which  was  a  great  advantage  for  Agassiz's 
purposes,  necessarily  handicaps  a  research  station. 
Thus  admirably  situated,  the  Woods  Hole  Labora- 
tory has  since  developed  into  one  of  the  two  best- 
known  and  best-equipped  marine  laboratories  in  the 
world,  the  other  being  Anton  Dohrn's  establishment 
at  Naples. 

But  during  the  summer  of  1874,  before  making  a 
final  decision  as  to  site,  Baird  tried  out  Noank, 
Connecticut,  to  which  port  he  transferred  his  little 
dredging  steamer,  the  Blue  Light,  and  a  few  volun- 
teer assistants.  The  work  at  Penikese  being  over, 
I  went  on  to  Noank  for  a  short  stay.  Baird  himself 
was  absent,  but  several  of  his  associates  were  hard 
at  work.  There  I  met  for  the  first  time  George  George 
Brown  Goode,  professor  in  Wesleyan  University 
and  a  volunteer  field  assistant  to  Baird  on  the  newly 
established  United  States  Fish  Commission.  A  man 
of  my  own  age  (born  in  New  Albany,  Indiana,  in 
1851),  of  medium  height,  rather  slender  figure, 
scholarly  appearance,  and  artistic  temperament,  he 
had  a  winning  manner  enlivened  by  great,  but  never 
uncritical,  enthusiasm.  Throughout  his  subsequent 
career  as  assistant  secretary  of  the  Smithsonian 
Institution,  Fish  Commissioner,  and  organizer  of 
the  National  Museum,  our  relations  remained  inti- 

n  125  ] 


The  Days  of  a  Man  £1874 

mate,  bound  as  we  were  by  ties  of  friendship  and 
common  scientific  pursuits;  and  I  was  personally 
under  large  obligations  to  him. 

Although  one  of  the  chief  builders  of  the  science 
tbe  of  Oceanic  Ichthyology,  Goode  was  equally  interested 
in  the  history  of  Zoology.  He  also  delighted  in 
setting  things  in  order;  the  striking  characteristic 
of  his  scientific  papers  was  scholarly  accuracy  and 
good  taste.  Among  American  naturalists  he  was 
perhaps  the  most  methodical  and  conscientious,  and, 
in  his  way,  the  most  artistic.  He  never  did  any- 
thing carelessly,  never  engaged  in  any  controversy, 
yet  no  one  was  more  ready  to  acknowledge  an 
error  or  showed  greater  willingness  to  recognize  the 
good  work  of  others.  The  most  extended  of  my' 
own  monographs,  "The  Fishes  of  North  and  Middle 
America,"  l  would  never  have  been  written  except 
for  his  repeated  insistence  and  generous  encourage- 
ment.2 

He  early  became  Baird's  closest  associate,  and 
the  period  embraced  by  the  '70*5,  '8o's,  and  '90*5,  in 
the  course  of  which  the  influence  of  those  two  men 
made  itself  generally  felt  in  Washington,  was  in  a 
real  sense  the  golden  age  of  American  governmental 
science.  And  his  death  in  1896  virtually  resulted 
from  overwork,  mostly  in  connection  with  the 

1  See  Chapter  xxi,  page  524. 

2  In  1879  Goode  did  me  the  honor  of  giving  the  name  Jordanella  to  a  genus 
of  handsome,  chubby  little  killifish  of  the  Florida  rivers,  now  valued  for  aquarium 
purposes.    Such  courtesies  serve  to  recall  to  students  the  names  of  their  prede- 
cessors. 

In  this  regard,  I  have  been  honored  beyond  my  deserts.  Jordania  is  a  rare, 
handsome,  and  primitive  sculpin  of  Piaget  Sound;  Jordanicus,  a  pearl  fish  of 
the  South  Seas,  living  in  the  body  cavity  of  a  sea  cucumber;  Jordanidia,  a 
predatory  mackerel  of  the  Black  Current  of  Japan;  Davidiat  a  filefish  of 
Brazil. 

C  126] 


18743  At  Noank 


organization  of  the  National  Museum  as  a  means  of 
popular  education  as  well  as  of  scientific  research. 

No  unkind  word  was  ever  said  of  Goode  either  in  Goods 
life  or  after  death.     In  1897,  at  the  request  of  the  theman 
Smithsonian  authorities,  I  prepared  a  brief  sketch 
of  his  work,  quoting  the  following  from  our  mutual 
colleague,  Gill,  of  whom  more  hereafter: 

His  disposition  was  a  bright  and  sunny  one,  and  he  in- 
gratiated himself  in  the  affections  of  his  friends  in  a  marked 
degree.  He  had  a  hearty  way  of  meeting  intimates,  and  a 
caressing  cast  of  the  arm  over  the  shoulder  of  such  a  one  often 
followed  sympathetic  intercourse.  But  in  spite  of  his  gentle- 
ness, firmness  and  vigor  became  manifest  where  occasion  called 
for  them. 

Goode's  most  important  scientific  treatise,  "Oce- 
anic Ichthyology,"  in  part  the  work  of  Dr.  Tarleton 
H.  Bean,  his  associate  (who,  by  the  way,  was  at 
Noank),  appeared  shortly  before  his  death. 

At  Noank  —  or  near  by,  at  Yale  —  I  also  met 
Addison  E.  Verrill,  another  distinguished  student 
of  Agassiz,  with  whom  I,  had  frequent  relations  in 
later  years.  There,  too,  I  found  my  old  Cornell 
friend,  Rathbun,  then  a  volunteer  assistant  on  the 
Fish  Commission,  of  which  in  time  he  became  the 
guiding  spirit ;  and  Alpheus  Hyatt,  one  of  Agassiz's 
best  students,  busily  engaged  in  the  study  of  sponges, 
a  fact  which  recalls  a  bit  of  pleasantry  at  his  expense. 
A  young  woman  visitor  being  about  to  marry, 
somebody  read  one  evening  a  poem  of  congratulation 
purporting  to  be  by  Professor  Hyatt.  In  this,  as  a 
climax,  he  was  quoted  as  saying: 

Now  thirteen  of  my  best  sponges 
Will  I  give  her  as  a  dower! 

n  1273 


The  Days  of  a  Man  £1874 

Mystic  Leaving  Noank  after  dark  to  take  the  train  at 
River  old  Mystic,  the  next  station,  five  miles  to  the  east, 
I  had  to  walk  the  track  and  cross  a  bridge  over  the 
broad  and  shallow  estuary  of  the  Mystic  River. 
This  stream  runs  through  a  marshy  woodland 
frequented  by  sad  and  insistent  night  herons. 
Nothing  particular  happened,  and  I  reached  my 
destination  in  safety;  but  the  weird  dusk  of  unseen 
water  in  an  unknown  but  not  uninhabited  wood  rises 
before  my  eye  whenever  I  meet  the  word  "mystic/' 


C  128  3 


CHAPTER  SIX 


FROM  Penikese  I  went  to  the  Museum  of  Com- 
parative Zoology,  wishing  to  take  up  the  study  of 
fossil  osteology  in  connection  with  the  promised 
curatorship  of  the  year  before.  But  I  felt  almost 
certain  that  the  museum  would  be  unable  to  maintain 
even  its  actual  staff,  now  that  Agassiz  was  gone,  its 
income  being  only  about  $10,000  and  its  accumulated 
debt  amounting  to  upward  of  $40,000,  a  sum  ulti- 
mately paid  off  by  Agassiz's  noted  son,  Alexander, 
whose  skillful  administration  of  the  Calumet  and 
Hecla  mines  made  him  later  a  multimillionaire.  My 
own  resources  were  meanwhile  running  low.  Conse- 
quently, when  shortly  afterward  I  received  a  tele- 
gram from  Superintendent  George  P.  Brown  of 
Indianapolis,  asking  me  to  take  up  the  science  work 
in  the  High  School  there,  I  gladly  accepted  the 
position. 

The  capital  of  Indiana  at  first  sight  seemed  singu-  Indian- 
larly  monotonous,  being  perfectly  level  and  laid  out  a*olis 
in  regular  squares  around  a  central  circle.  The 
streets,  moreover,  were  lined  with  the  Silver  Maple, 
a  second-rate  shade  tree  which  did  not  appeal  to 
me.  But  the  people  said  I  would  learn  to  love  the 
town.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  I  did  —  among  other 
reasons  because  it  contained  an  unusual  number  of 
clear-headed  and  broad-minded  citizens,  to  some  of 
whom  I  shall  presently  revert.  When  I  reached 
Indianapolis,  I  did  not  know  a  single  person  in  the 
state;  at  the  end  of  seventeen  years,  when  I  left 

C  129  3 


The  Days  of  a  Man  £1874 

for  California,  I  had  made  acquaintances  in  every 
one  of  the  ninety-two  counties. 

Indian-  My  first  (and  only)  year  as  a  high  school  teacher 
a*?I{s  proved  a  pleasant  one.  The  institution  started  out 
School  that  fall  with  a  new  principal  and  a  fresh  body  of 
young  teachers.  Among  these  was  William  W. 
Parsons,  afterward  for  more  than  forty  years  presi- 
dent of  the  Indiana  State  Normal  School  at  Terre 
Haute.  Another  was  Lewis  H.  Jones,  long  at  the 
head  of  the  Michigan  State  Normal  at  Ypsilanti. 
A  favorite  with  all  was  Will  Thompson,  who  came 
bringing  his  bride,  May  Wright,  a  woman  of  re- 
markable keenness  of  mind,  a  graduate  of  the  Uni- 
versity of  Michigan.  After  her  husband's  death 
Mrs.  Thompson  left  the  High  School  (where  she  had 
been  teacher  of  German)  to  organize  in  the  city  a 
classical  school  for  girls.  Later  she  married  another 
of  my  good  friends,  Theodore  L.  Sewall,  a  Harvard 
man,  and  at  that  time  master  of  the  local  classical 
school  for  boys.  In  the  early  '90*8  Mr.  Sewall  also 
died.  His  wife  had  meanwhile  become  a  leader  in 
movements  for  equal  suffrage  and  international 
peace,  acquiring  in  time  a  wide  reputation  both  in 
America  and  in  Europe. 

Of  the  teachers  whom  we  found  already  in  the 
institution  the  most  beloved  was  Mary  E.  Nichol- 
son, a  capable  and  scholarly  woman,  a  member  of 
the    Society   of   Friends,   who   devoted   her   whole 
active  life  to  the  service  of  the  youth  of  her  city. 
Enter         In  the  High  School  I  had  a  fine  body  of  pupils. 
Gilbert    Qne  Of  tjiem>  intimately  associated  with  me  in  after 
years,  was  Charles  H.  Gilfeert,  now  the  well-known 
zoologist.     Another  was   Charles   C.   Nutting,   for 
thirty  years  or  more  professor  of  Zoology  at  the 

C  130  3 


1874]  The  Study  of  Birds 

University  of  Iowa.  Still  another  was  Nellie  Van  de 
Grift  —  later  Mrs.  Sanchez  —  sister  of  Mrs.  Robert 
Louis  Stevenson,  who  as  Fannie  Van  de  Grift  spent 
her  youth  in  Indianapolis. 

In  connection  with  my  work  I  interested  several 
of  my  students  in  the  field  study  of  birds.  The  tall  warblfrs 
trees  of  Maywood  down  the  White  River  were  the 
favorite  resort  of  the  migrating  warblers,  and  nearly 
all  the  species  which  cross  Indiana  could  be  found 
there.  I  know  of  no  finer  out-of-door  study  than 
Ornithology.  It  has,  however,  the  almost  fatal 
drawback  that  to  secure  any  degree  of  thoroughness, 
one  must  kill.  Dealing  with  such  highly  developed 
organisms  is  and  ought  to  be  painful.  Somebody 
has  said  that  in  shooting  a  wood  thrush  one  feels 
he  has  destroyed  a  "superior  being." 

I  never  killed  anything  for  the  pleasure  of  it,  and 
since  1880  I  have  not  even  owned  a  gun,  nor  fired 
a  shot  at  any  living  creature;  my  last  attempt  was  vertebrates 
directed  at  a  California  burrowing  owl,  which  got 
away  with  its  life.  But  from  1874  to  1876,  in  Wis- 
consin and  Indiana,  I  made  large  collections  of 
birds,  and  prepared  a  series  of  descriptions  for  my 
first  real  contribution  to  science  —  "A  Manual  of 
Vertebrates  of  the  Eastern  United  States,"  published 
in  1876.  This  has  gone  through  ten  editions  and  is 
still  considerably  used  in  schools  of  the  region  it 
covers.  It  had  been  preceded,  however,  by  a  booklet 
printed  at  Appleton,  the  joint  work  of  Balfour  Van 
Vleck  (an  enthusiastic  young  naturalist  in  Lawrence 
University)  and  myself  —  an  effort  of  which  (as 
Dr.  Coues  once  observed)  "the  less  said  the  better, 
except  that  it  paved  the  way  to  the  excellent  Manual 
of  Vertebrates." 


The  Days  of  a  Man  [1875 

Marriage  On  March  io,  1875,  I  was  married  at  Peru,  Berk- 
sk*re  County,  Massachusetts,  to  Susan  Bowen, 
daughter  of  Sylvester  S.  Bowen  of  that  town.  Miss 
Bowen  had  been  at  Penikese  both  the  first  and 
second  summers.  A  favorite  pupil  of  Miss  Shattuck, 
she  then  held  the  position  of  associate  in  Botany  at 
Mount  Holyoke  Seminary,  of  which  she  was  a 
graduate.  She  was  a  woman  at  once  gentle  and 
enthusiastic,  always  hopeful,  and  of  the  type  for 
which  the  word  "beloved"  is  naturally  employed. 
After  ten  years  of  married  life  she  died  at  Blooming- 
ton,  Indiana,  November  15,  1885,  leaving  three 
children  —  Edith  Monica,  born  in  1877;  Harold 
Bowen,  born  in  1882;  and  Thora,  born  in  1884, 
who  survived  her  mother  less  than  two  years. 


Among  my  new  friends  in  Indianapolis  was  Dr. 
Oscar  Carlton  McCuiioch,  pastor  of  Plymouth 
Church  and  a  most  humanly  genial  and  broad- 
minded  man.  Appreciating  his  fine  work,  religious, 
social,  political,  and  charitable,  I  became  a  member 
of  the  Plymouth  Congregation,  —  the  only  religious 
organization  I  ever  formally  joined,  —  and  in  after 
years  I  used  occasionally  to  speak  from  that  pulpit. 
My  homily  on  "The  Disappearance  of  Great  Men 
from  Public  Life"1  was  first  given  there,  as  was 
also  my  account  of  the  Oberammergau  Passion 
Play. 

McCuiioch  was  making  a  special  study  of  the 
problems  of  hereditary  poverty,  and  conducted  a 

1  See  Chapter  xin,  page  313. 

C  132  1 


• 


1876]  The  Tribe  of  Ishmael 

detailed  investigation  of  the  "Tribe  of  Ishmael," 
a  local  group  of  "poor  whites"  mostly  bearing 
Ishmael  as  a  surname.  A  large  majority  of  them 
were  descendants  of  prisoners  for  debt  sent  over 
from  England  to  Jamestown,  Virginia,  to  become 
ancestors  of  a  forlorn  group  of  ne'er-do-wells  scattered 
through  the  Middle  West.  With  the  assistance  of 
the  Associated  Charities  of  Indianapolis,  which  he 
himself  organized,  McCulloch  gathered  the  records 
of  some  five  thousand  of  those  benighted  people 
about  whose  doors  clustered  most  of  the  petty 
crimes  and  nearly  all  of  the  poverty  of  the 
town. 

This  piece  of  research  was  one  of  the  first  and  Pauperism 
most  illuminating  of  the  many  studies  of  inherited 
incapacity.  Its  general  conclusion  I  may  sum  up 
briefly.  Among  the  poor  there  are  three  kinds  — 
the  Lord's  poor,  the  Devil's  poor,  and  paupers; 
that  is,  those  that  have  fallen  into  poverty 
through  misfortune,  those  that  have  earned  and 
deserved  it  through  vice,  and  those  that  have  in- 
herited feeble  minds  and  feeble  wills  so  that  in  an 
open  competitive  world  they  of  necessity  fall  to 
the  bottom,  being  destitute  of  initiative  and  self- 
respect. 

Closely  associated  with  McCulloch  was  Myron  Reed 
W.  Reed,  pastor  of  the  First  Presbyterian  Church, 
a  commanding  figure  in  the  pulpit  but  uncon- 
ventional on  week  days,  when  he  sometimes  walked 
down  town  in  carpet  slippers.  Reed  was  a  man  of 
charming  personality,  tall  and  handsome,  with  a 
fine  voice  and  a  striking  use  of  epigram.  A  noted 
angler,  he  made  frequent  fishing  trips  to  the  region 
about  Lake  Superior.  One  phase  of  his  attitude 

C  i33  3 


The  Days  of  a  Man  £1876 

toward  life  is  well  expressed  in  a  saying  of  his,  "The 
man  who  has  a  sore  heel  on  a  tramp  always  remembers 
it  with  a  grin."  Removing  to  Denver,  he  there  be- 
came prominent  as  a  labor  advocate. 

McCulloch  and  Reed  were  warm  friends.  At  the 
former's  funeral,  Reed  paid  him  a  noble  tribute : 

In  whatever  part  of  God's  universe  he  may  find  himself, 
he  will  be  a  hopeful  man,  looking  forward  and  not  backward, 
looking  upward  and  not  downward,  always  ready  to  lend  a 
helping  hand  and  not  afraid  to  die. 

The  presence  of  these  two,  as  well  as  of  othejrs 
with  whom  I  was  less  intimate,  gave  zest  to  the 
Indianapolis  Men's  Club  and  to  all  meetings  of 
bright  minds  in  the  city.  There  is,  moreover,  a 
peculiar  flavor  to  the  native  wit  of  Indiana  not 
exactly  found  in  any  of  the  other  states,  and  it  used 
to  be  freely  displayed  in  our  varied  gatherings. 

Harrison  Another  man  of  prominence,  of  a  very  different 
type,  was  Benjamin  Harrison,  an  excellent  lawyer, 
quiet,  undemonstrative,  conscientious,  cold  in  manner 
and  lacking  the  ordinary  elements  of  popularity,  but 
making  himself  a  power  in  the  state  through  his 
persistent  choice  of  men  of  character  as  his  political 
lieutenants.  As  President  of  the  United  States  he 
was  remarkable  for  the  conscientious  care  he  took 
in  regard  to  government  appointments,  especially 
those  of  judges  and  attorneys.  Good  men  in  power, 
he  insisted,  made  the  party  strong,  while  officials 
whom  the  people  did  not  trust  were  always  an 
element  of  weakness.  No  other  President,  in  re- 
cent years  at  least,  has  been  equally  careful.  In 

n  1343 


1890]  The  Mugwump 


this  matter  the  subsequent  administration  of 
McKinley  stood  in  marked  contrast  to  that  of 
Harrison. 

I  happened  to  be  in  the  latter's  office  in  the  White 
House  when  McKinley  entered  from  the  House  of 
Representatives  with  the  text  of  his  famous  tariff 
bill.  To  Elijah  W.  Halford,  a  well-known  member 
of  the  Indianapolis  group,  then  the  President's 
secretary,  I  said  that  McKinley  would  live  to  regret 
that  bill.  But  I  was  mistaken;  it  was  Harrison 
himself  who  had  to  bear  the  burden,  being  defeated 
for  reelection  by  Cleveland,  after  which  a  rebound  — 
largely  the  result  of  the  panic  during  the  latter's 
administration  —  made  McKinley  the  next  Presi- 
dent. Moreover,  the  "free  silver"  issue,  Bryan's 
whole  platform  in  two  campaigns,  had  further 
alarmed  financiers,  and  thus  played  directly  into  the 
hands  of  McKinley's  backers.  Indeed,  on  this  issue 
most  of  the  "Mugwumps"  (to  which  group  I  be- 
longed) voted  also  for  McKinley  in  1896,  fearing 
that  the  financial  disorders  which  must  follow  the 
shifting  of  monetary  standards  would  outweigh  the 
evils  of  high  tariff  and  of  the  spoils  system  in  poli- 
tics. And  in  spite  of  those  factors  to  which  we  were 
continuously  opposed,  four  years  later  most  of  us 
again  supported  McKinley  against  Bryan.  As 
William  P.  Fishback,  an  able  Indianapolis  lawyer, 
one  of  my  good  friends,  remarked,  "We  were  rowing 
one  way  and  looking  the  other."  Some  have  re- 
pented their  choice  in  that  dilemma ;  some  have  not. 
It  is,  indeed,  not  impossible  that  Bryan  would  have 
been  the  safer,  as  the  rise  of  senatorial  domination 
was  more  of  a  menace  than  any  financial  heresy 
originating  with  the  people. 

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Dr.  Prominent  among  Indianapolis  physicians  was  the 

Fletcher  brilliant  and  original  Dr.  William  B.  Fletcher,  an 
expert  in  mental  disorders.  Long  at  the  head  of 
the  State  Hospital  for  the  Insane,  located  near  the 
city,  he  there  early  abolished  medieval  methods  of 
violent  restraint,  being  thus  one  of  the  pioneers  in 
the  modern  humane  treatment,  of  the  mentally  dis- 
ordered. In  the  early  summer  of  1891,  Dr.  Fletcher's 
excellent  daughter  Lucy,  with  her  capable  friend, 
Eleanor  B.  Pearson,  both  from  the  Harvard  Annex, 
established  the  first  preparatory  school  for  girls  1  in 
the  neighborhood  of  Stanford  University.  Both 
these  young  women  afterward  married  professors  in 
the  institution. 

Among  all  my  Indianapolis  friends,  none  had 
greater  personal  charm  than  James  Whitcomb  Riley, 
th€  poet  whose  name  has  since  become  a  household 
.word.  Riley  was  a  gentle,  lovable  man,  with  a  fine 
sense  of  humor  and  a  warm  heart  which  for  a  time 
threatened  to  be  his  undoing.  When  his  gracious 
and  homely  poems  brought  him  into  general  public 
notice,  they  opened  the  door  to  a  profitable  career 
as  a  reader,  for  he  rendered  his  own  verse  in  de- 
lightful fashion.  Nothing  apparently  could  ruffle 
the  sweetness  of  his  temper.  In  1892  he  gave  a 
reading  at  Stanford  University,  after  which  he  was 
fiercely  assailed  by  Ambrose  Bierce  for  "corrupting" 
the  English  language  by  writing  in  the  "Hoosier 
dialect."  Some  one  asked  Riley  why  he  did  not 
strike  back.  "I  did,"  said  Riley;  "I  hit  him  with 
a  great  chunk  of  silence." 

During  his  brief  stay  at  Stanford  he  was  my  guest, 
and  at  my  request  wrote  in  our  visitors'  book  his 

1  Called  Castilleja  Hall  upon  completion  of  its  original  building  at  Palo  Alto. 

n  136] 


1878]  Indiana  Poets 


poem  "Bereaved,"1  with  the  remark  that  he  thought 
it  "perhaps  the  best  of  his  brood."  In  1915  I  visited 
him  "in  Lockerbie  Street,"  already  the  Mecca  of 
Indiana  poets.  He  was  then  about  sixty-two  years 
old,  unable  to  rise  from  bed  and  near  his  end;  but 
his  friendly  personal  interest  and  kindly  relation  to 
the  world  he  was  leaving  had  in  no  degree  abated. 

Another  Indiana  poet,  not  of  Indianapolis,  how-  Thompson 
ever,  was  Maurice  Thompson,  a  man  of  force  and 
scholarship  but  less  personal  charm  than  the  inimi- 
table Riley.  Once  at  my  request  he  also  wrote  out 
for  us  two  stanzas  from  the  best  of  his  brood  — 
"To  the  Grand  Army  of  the  Republic."  2 

Poets  of  various  grades  seem  to  spring  up  spon- 
taneously in  Indiana.  Alvin  Heiney,  a  student  of 
mine,  in  a  bit  of  verse  asked  for  no  wings  or  harp 

1  Let  me  come  in  where  you  sit  weeping,  —  ay, 
Let  me,  who  have  not  any  child  to  die, 
Weep  with  you  for  the  little  one  whose  love 
I  have  known  nothing  of. 

The  little  arms  that  slowly,  slowly  loosed 
Their  pressure  round  your  neck;    the  hands  you  used 
To  kiss.  —  Such  arms  —  such   hands  I  never  knew, 
May  I  not  weep  with  you? 

Fain  would  I  be  of  service  —  say  something, 
Between  the  tears,  that  would  be  comforting, — 
But  ah!  so  sadder  than  yourselves  am  I, 
Who  have  no  child  to  die. 

*  I  am  a  Southerner, 
I  loved  the  South  and  dared  for  her 
To  fight  from  Lookout  to  the  sea 
With  her  proud  banner  over  me. 

But  from  my  lips  thanksgiving  broke 
When  God  in  battle  thunder  spoke, 
With  that  black  demon  breeding  drouth 
And  dearth  of  human  sympathy, 
Blown  hellward  from  the  cannon's  mouth, 
While  Freedom  cheered  before  its  stroke. 

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The  Days  of  a  Man  1:1875 

or  crown  of  gold,  only  for  a  chance  at  a  place  "on 
the  bleachers  where  ten  thousand  Hoosier  poets 
sit."  1 

TWO  Among  my  most  valued  friends  in  the  state  at 

friends  iarge>  I  counted  Dr.  John  Sloan  of  New  Albany,  a 
large  native  of  Maine,  a  man  of  friendly  and  attractive 
personality,  a  fine  type  of  the  well-rounded  country 
doctor.  Sloan  devoted  the  leisure  of  a  busy  practice 
of  medicine  to  the  study  of  the  Natural  History  of 
the  Ohio  Valley.  He  thus  acquired  a  thorough 
knowledge  of  birds  and  crayfishes,  beetles  and  snails, 
and  in  later  years  of  bacteria,  of  which  group  of 
organisms  he  prepared  many  slides;  these,  ac- 
companied by  slides  of  plant  tissues,  he  presented 
to  the  University  of  Indiana. 

William  Dudley  Foulke,  whose  delightful  home  at 
Richmond  I  have  at  times  visited,  will  appear  in 
later  pages. 


At  At  the  end  of  a  fairly  successful  year  in  Indian- 


apOiis   I  went  at  the  request  of  Professor  Shaler  as 

land  Gap    .  r  •         «  •         «TT  in  niir 

instructor  in  his  Harvard  bummer  bcnool  ot 
Geology"  at  Cumberland  Gap,  Tennessee.  On  my 
way  to  the  Gap,  for  adventure's  sake  and  accompa- 
nied by  a  young  engineer  named  Harper  from 
Purdue  University,  I  took  a  cross-country  tramp  of 
some  days'  duration.  Coming  upon  a  number  of 
backwoods  baseball  teams,  we  occasionally  joined 
in  for  a  game,  Harper  as  catcher,  I  as  pitcher.  The 
possibility  of  throwing  curved  balls  was  just  then 

1  A  "bleacher"  is  an  uncovered  seat  outside  the  grand  stand  at  a  baseball 
game.    "Hoosier"  is  a  nickname  of  unknown  origin  applied  to  Indiana  folk. 

C  1383 


Harvard  School  of  Geology 


under  discussion.  I  could  not  do  much  in  that  line, 
but  I  was  more  skillful  than  my  rustic  rivals  at 
pitching  a  ball  which  would  readily  turn  out  a 
"pop  fly"  —  that  is,  a  short  hit  into  the  air.  As  I 
remember,  our  teams  lost  none  of  the  four  or  five 
games  we  played. 

My  part  in  the  School  of  Geology  was  to  give 
instruction  in  the  local  flora  to  thirty  young  ge- 
ologists, many  of  them  of  marked  ability.  And  to 
mention  this  pleasant  experience  is  inevitably  to 
recall  our  leader's  extraordinarily  charming  person- 
ality, his  overflowing  humor,  brilliant  simplicity,  and 
absolute  naturalness  in  dealing  with  everything  and 
everybody.  At  Harvard  any  great  noise  used  to  be 
ascribed  to  student  applause  at  "one  of  Shaler's 
jokes,"  even  a  clap  of  thunder  being  thus  accounted 
for  occasionally. 

Our  encampment  on  the  mountain  shelf  awakened  The 
great  interest  and  some  alarm  among  the  native  mou"tam 

i  11*  i          •  •  camp 

population,  one  man  recalling  that  just  previous  to 
the  outbreak  of  the  Civil  War  fifteen  years  before, 
he  had  seen  men  in  tents  there  with  the  flag  flying 
above  them  at  the  summit.  He  was  therefore  con- 
vinced that  our  presence  was  a  warning  and  that 
the  people  should  be  prepared.  Another  incident 
which  contributed  to  the  general  gayety  occurred 
when  a  Harvard  student  attempted  to  mount  his 
pony  from  the  right  side.  The  animal,  a  true  son  of 
the  South,  resented  the  outrage  and  left  its  perpe- 
trator where  Brer  Rabbit  of  Georgia  was  "born  and 
bred"  —  that  is,  in  the  brier  patch. 

During  my  stay  at  Cumberland  Gap  I  was  elected 
without  warning  to  the  professorship  of  Biology  in 
the  Northwestern  Christian  University,  already  being 

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removed  from  Indianapolis  to  Irvington,  a  suburb 
University  five  miles  distant  and  since  included  within  the  city. 
This  being  the  case,  my  first  professional  duty  was 
to  steer  a  dray  wagon  loaded  with  collections  and 
apparatus  on  its  several  trips  from  College  Avenue 
to  the  new  site.  Coincident  with  removal,  the 
burdensome  original  name  was  changed  to  "Butler 
University"  in  honor  of  its  principal  founder, 
Mr.  Ovid  Butler  of  Indianapolis,  a  broad-minded 
and  fine-spirited  member  of  the  Christian1  Church. 
The  institution  making  no  provision  for  graduate 
study,  it  later  became  "Butler  College,"  and  has 
done  continuously  good  work  in  collegiate  education. 
My  position  was  that  of  Dean  of  Science,  and  I 
spent  four  years  in  the  service,  Herbert  Copeland 
having  meanwhile  taken  my  former  position  in  the 
Indianapolis  High  School. 

As  housing  conditions  were  inadequate  in  Irving- 
ton,  I  continued  to  reside  in  Indianapolis  for  another 
year,  sharing  with  Copeland  a  modest  establishment 
joint  at  320  Ash  Street.  Here  we  resumed  our  joint 
studies  studies  of  flowers  and  birds  begun  at  Cornell  and 
continued  in  Wisconsin.  Soon,  however,  we  decided 
that  fishes  offered  the  most  fruitful  field  for  original 
work.  Systematic  Botany  involved  travel  and  ex- 
pense beyond  our  reach,  and  we  were  not  especially 
drawn  to  the  problems  (then  inchoate)  of  cytology, 
morphology,  and  physiology.  But  fishes  were  every- 
where about  us.  Moreover,  the  literature  of  Ich- 

1  "Christian"  is  used  specifically  to  designate  the  denomination  in  question, 
because  its  founder,  Alexander  Campbell  of  Virginia,  hoped  that  by  dropping 
creeds  and  going  back  to  the  Bible  as  the  basis  of  faith  and  practice,  all  Chris- 
tian denominations  could  be  merged  into  one. 

C  140  H 


1875]  The  Study  of  Fishes 

thyology  was  inexact  and  incomplete,  with  few 
comparative  studies,  so  that  the  field  seemed  wide 
open,  as  indeed  it  was.  We  planned,  therefore,  to 
cover  the  river  faunas,  to  set  accumulated  knowledge 
in  order,  and  to  extend  it  as  far  as  possible. 

Along  this  line  I  myself  had  previously  made  a 
beginning  with  a  paper  on  the  "Sisco  of  Lake  Tippe-  Lake 
canoe,"  printed  in  the  report  of  the  Geological  rippecanoe 
Survey  of  Indiana.  That  species  —  called  by  me 
Argyrosomus  sisco  —  is  an  offshoot  of  the  Cisco  (as 
the  name  is  now  usually  spelled)  or  Lake  Herring 
of  Lake  Michigan,  but  separated  from  the  parent 
stock  since  the  last  glacial  period.  Similar  land- 
locked ciscos  occur  in  Lake  Geneva,  Wisconsin,  and 
in  other  deep,  clear  lakes  belonging  to  the  Illinois 
River  system,  as  the  Tippecanoe  belongs  to  the 
Wabash. 

During  the  course  of  a  year  and  a  half  Copeland  ne 
and  I  worked  together  on  three  sets  of  investigations,  Johnny 

i_  i  r       i_«  i  i  i  i-  i      i     •    •      i        Darters 

the  results  ot  which  were  later  published  jointly. 
These  papers  were  (a)  a  study  of  the  life  history  of 
the  Johnny  Darters — the  Etheostomidce;  (b)  the 
identification  of  the  fishes  described  from  the  Falls 
of  the  Ohio  by  Constantine  Rafinesque;  and  (c)  a 
catalogue  of  the  fresh-water  fishes  of  the  United 
States.  In  connection  with  the  first  we  maintained 
a  well-appointed  aquarium  in  which  we  reared  for 
observation  the  ten  or  twelve  species  of  darters 
living  in  the  adjacent  White  River.  These  we  found 
to  be  the  most  fascinating,  vivacious,  and  individual 
of  all  river  fish.  They  are  not  the  most  hardy, 
however,  and  being  bred  in  pure  running  water,  will 
stand  no  neglect. 
Any  one  who  has  ever  been  a  boy  and  can  re- 

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member  back  to  the  days  of  tag  alders,  yellow  cow- 
slips, and  angleworms  on  a  pin  hook,  will  recall  his 
first  acquaintance  with  a  Johnny  Darter.  There  lay 
a  little  fish,  apparently  asleep,  on  the  bottom  of  the 
stream,  half  hidden  under  a  stone  or  leaf,  his  tail 
bent  round  it  as  if  for  support  against  the  current. 
But  when  you  put  a  finger  down,  the  bent  tail 
straightened,  and  you  next  spied  him  resting  a  few 
feet  away,  head  upstream.  Nothing  had  seemed 
easier  than  to  catch  him,  but  somehow  you  failed. 

Not  to  know  the  Johnny  Darters  is  to  miss  a  real 
joy  of  boy  life.  All  of  them  are  very  little  —  some 
less  than  two  inches  long  and  the  largest  only  six 
or  eight  at  most.  They  are,  nevertheless,  the  most 
graceful  in  form,  and  many  of  them  the  most  brilliant 
in  color,  of  all  fresh-water  fishes. 

In  our  second  paper  we  undertook  to  identify  the 
forms  named  in  1820  by  Constantine  Rafinesque,  the 
first  student  of  Western  fishes,  in  his  "Ichthyologia 
Ohiensis,"  where  he  described  hastily,  carelessly,  and 
enthusiastically  the  various  species  he  had  found  in 
the  brooks  about  Louisville.  While  we  were  thus 
engaged,  the  unique  personality  of  the  man  himself 
intrigued  us  mightily.  And  some  short  account  of 
him  may  be  not  unwelcome  here. 

Rafinesque  was  born  in  Constantinople  of  a 
French  father  and  a  German  mother.  At  Marseilles, 
in  early  youth,  his  future  career  was  blocked  out 
along  two  lines : 

It  was  among  the  flowers  and  fruits  of  that  delightful  region 
that  I  first  began  to  enjoy  life,  and  I  became  a  botanist.  After- 
wards, the  first  prize  I  received  in  school  was  a  book  of  animals, 
and  I  became  a  zoologist  and  a  naturalist.  .  .  .  Linne,  grand 
genie,  fai  cboisi  pour  guide. 

n  142  3 


18753          A  Neglected  Naturalist 

As  a  boy  also  he  read  many  books  of  travel,  those 
of  Captain  Cook,  Levaillant,  and  Pallas  especially, 
so  that  his  soul  was  fired  with  the  desire  "to  be  a 
great  traveler  like  them/'  "And  I  became  such," 
he  adds  tersely,  having  framed  his  life  motto  in  two 
lines  of  doggerel : 

Un  voyageur  des  le  berceau, 
Je  le  serai  jusqu'au  tombeau. 

No  more  remarkable  figure  has  ever  appeared  in 
the  annals  of  American  science.     Clad  in  "a  long,  ™ 
loose  coat  of  yellow  nankeen,  stained  yellower  by  J 
the  clay  of  the  roads,  and  variegated  by  the  juices 
of  plants,"  he  arrived  in  Kentucky  —  on  foot  —  a 
century  ago,  a  notebook  in   one   hand,  a   hickory 
stick  in  the  other,  his  capacious  pockets  full  of  wild 
flowers,  shells,  and  toads. 

In  his  sketch  entitled  "A  Neglected  Naturalist," 
Copeland  said: 

To  many  of  our  untiring  naturalists,  who  sixty  years  ago 
accepted  the  perils  and  privations  of  the  Far  West  to  collect 
and  describe  its  animals  and  plants,  we  have  given  the  only 
reward  they  sought  —  the  grateful  remembrance  of  their  work. 
Audubon  died  full  of  riches  and  honor,  with  the  knowledge 
that  his  memory  would  be  cherished  as  long  as  birds  should 
sing.  Wilson  is  the  "father  of  American  ornithology,"  and  his 
mistakes  and  faults  are  forgotten  in  our  admiration  of  his 
great  achievements.  Le  Sueur  is  remembered  as  the  "first  to 
explore  the  ichthyology  of  the  great  American  Lakes."  Labor- 
ing with  these,  and  greatest  of  them  all  in  respect  to  the  extent 
and  range  of  his  accomplishments,  is  one  whose  name  has 
been  nearly  forgotten,  and  who  is  oftenest  mentioned  in  the 
field  of  his  best  labors  with  pity  or  contempt. 

It  is,  nevertheless,  true  that  while,  as  Agassiz 
said,  Rafinesque  "was  a  better  man  than  he  ap- 

C  H3  3 


The  Days  of  a  Man  £1875 

peared,"  and  while  he  undoubtedly  had  great  insight1 
and  greater  energy,  his  work  does  not  deserve  a 
high  place  in  the  records  of  science.  His  failure 
seems  due  to  two  things :  first,  his  lack  of  attention 
to  details,  a  defect  which  vitiated  all  his  writings; 
and,  second,  his  versatility,  which  led  him  to  invade 
every  available  field  of  learning. 

Dying  almost  deserted,  in  Philadelphia,  he  was 
buried  stealthily  by  two  or  three  students  to  fore- 
stall the  sale  of  the  body  to  a  medical  school  for 
unpaid  rent.  A  whole  nation  wept  for  Agassiz. 
Both  men  were  learned  naturalists,  both  had  ac- 
quired high  reputations  in  Europe  before  casting 
their  lot  with  America.  But  while  Agassiz's  big 
heart  went  out  toward  every  one  with  whom  he 
came  in  contact,  Rafinesque  loved  no  man  or  woman, 
and  died,  as  he  had  lived,  alone.  Yet  his  last  re- 
corded words,  "Time  renders  justice  to  all  alike/' 
reveal  a  noble  stoicism. 
Catalogue  Our  third  considerable  piece  of  work,  the  cata- 
'°Sue  °f  fishes,  was  necessarily  incomplete,  repre- 
senting  only  the  accumulated  knowledge  of  the  time. 
In  succeeding  years  it  was  my  privilege  to  add 
probably  half  as  many  more  species  and  yet  reduce 
a  large  number  of  names  to  the  rank  of  synonyms, 
so  often  had  different  authors  described  the  same 
thing  under  other  names.  Take  for  example  Ictalurus 
punctatus,  the  Channel  Cat  of  the  Ohio,  which  had 
appeared  as  a  new  species  twenty-eight  times,  or 
the  small-mouth  Black  Bass  —  Micropterus  dolomieu 
—  which  was  not  far  behind. 

1  It  is  worth  noting  that  Rafinesque  was  one  of  the  very  first  to  gain  a 
clear  conception  of  organic  evolution,  the  principles  of  which  constitute  the 
foundation  of  modern  Biology. 

C  H4  3 


1877]  In  Irving  ton 


In  the  fall  of  1876,  renting  a  fine  large  house  left 
stranded  by  the  collapse  of  a  recent  boom,  I  moved 
to  Irvington,  where  my  daughter  Edith  was  born. 
The  aquaria  I  left  with  Copeland,  but  we  still 
carried  on  joint  work  in  other  lines.  With  the  year 
1876,  however,  our  collaboration  ended,  for  on  the 
first  of  January,  1877,  Copeland  fell  into  the  White  Cope- 
River  and  died  shortly  afterward  from  resultant  7fnc?'J 

rp!  V  ,.r  j  death 

exposure.  Inus  out  of  my  lite  passed  my  most 
intimate  early  friend,  and  one  of  the  brightest 
minds  with  which  I  was  ever  associated.  His  rare 
intellectual  quality  I  have  already  described  in 
pages  which  deal  with  my  college  experiences. 

The  position  left  vacant  by  Copeland's  death  was 
filled  by  our  college  mate,  Brayton,  who  afterward 
took  up  the  practice  of  medicine  and  has  now  for 
many  years  held  the  professorship  of  Dermatology 
in  the  Indiana  Medical  College.  This  institution  Indiana 
was  originally  a  branch  of  the  State  University;  Medical 

i         •       i      tx-   j      i  »i  i  •       t     College 

but  in  the  60  s  the  connection  became  purely  nominal, 
as  the  state  legislature  voted  to  discontinue  both 
its  medical  and  law  schools,  asserting  it  to  be  "no 
duty  of  the  people  to  help  men  into  these  easy 
professions/'  And  in  1875  tne  relation,  so  far  as 
medicine  was  concerned,  was  entirely  broken  —  to 
be  resumed,  however,  on  a  large  scale  in  1912,  when 
the  Medical  College  was  reestablished  on  the  modern 
basis  of  a  teaching  faculty. 

While  engaged  with  my  work  in  the  Indianapolis 
High  School  I  was  also  able  to  spend  some  time  in 
the  Medical  College,  from  which,  in  the  spring  of 

C  I4S3 


The  Days  of  a  Man  £1875 

Doctor      1875,   I    received   the    (scarcely   earned)    degree   of 
°/, j        Doctor  of  Medicine,  though  it  had  not  at  all  been 

Medicine  .  .  c       .  A 

my  intention  to  enter  that  profession.  A  certain 
amount  of  medical  knowledge,  I  thought,  would 
enable  me  to  teach  Physiology  better.  As  a  matter 
of  fact,  the  next  year  I  gave  a  course  of  lectures  on 
Comparative  Anatomy  in  the  college  itself. 

At  about  the  same  time,  one  of  my  special  friends, 
Wiley  Harvey  W.  Wiley,  since  noted  as  the  apostle  of  pure 
foods  and  rational  sanitation,  won  his  medical  degree 
from  the  same  institution  for  purposes  similar  to 
mine.  Wiley,  by  the  way,  had  preceded  me,  though 
not  immediately,  both  in  the  High  School  and  in  the 
Northwestern  Christian  University,  and  he  recently 
recalled  to  my  mind  the  fact  that  he  was  instrumental 
in  my  going  to  Indianapolis.  It  seems  that  one  of 
his  former  professors  at  Harvard  (probably  Shaler) 
had  written  to  him  about  "a  young  man  named 
Jordan,  said  by  Agassiz  to  be  his  most  promising 
student  in  Natural  History."  Consequently  when 
a  member  of  the  local  school  board  asked  him  (Wiley) 
to  suggest  a  suitable  science  teacher  for  the  High 
School,  he  mentioned  me;  and  Superintendent 
Brown  at  once  got  off  the  telegram  which  arrived 
so  opportunely  at  Cambridge.1 

Wiley  is  a  man  of  independent  character  and  rare 
wit,  so  that  to  meet  him  is  to  encounter  a  rush  of 
fresh  air,  though  by  some  freak  of  heredity  he  looks 
like  a  conventional,  well-nourished  bishop.  Once 
presenting  himself  in  silk  hat  and  frock  coat  at  the 

1  The  rest  of  the  story  (which  has  already  appeared  in  print)  I  relate  with 
diffidence  and  only  because  Wiley  himself  appears  to  set  much  store  by  it. 
Being  once  asked  to  mention  his  greatest  discovery  in  science,  referring  to  Sir 
Humphry  Davy's  "discovery  of  Michael  Faraday"  my  over-enthusiastic 
sponsor  replied,  "David  Starr  Jordan." 

C  146] 


1875]  Harvey  W.  Wiley 

door  of  Girard  College,  Philadelphia,  where,  through 
a  whim  of  its  founder,  Stephen  Girard,  no  clerical 
is  ever  to  enter,  he  was  at  first  repulsed.  "We 
don't  allow  any  clergyman  here,"  said  the  warden. 
"The  hell  you  don't/'  replied  Wiley,  and  was  there-  Not  a 
upon  promptly  admitted.  clerical 

From  Indianapolis  he  went  as  professor  of  Chemis- 
try to  the  newly  established  Purdue  University  — 
the  State  Agricultural  College  of  Indiana  —  at 
Lafayette,  where  he  was  an  active  spirit  both  inside 
and  outside  the  institution.  Once  the  president,  a 
prim  and  fussy  personage,  haled  him  before  the 
board  of  trustees  on  three  charges :  (a)  he  failed  to 
attend  morning  prayer;  (b)  he  rode  a  "cartwheel" 
(bicycle)  in  a  "grotesque  costume"  (knickerbockers); 
and  (c)  he  played  baseball!  The  further  complaint 
that  he  belonged  to  a  political  (Republican)  club 
was,  however,  not  pressed.  But  the  same  official 
having  made  a  futile  attack  on  college  fraternities, 
Sigma  Chi,  then  politically  powerful  in  Indiana,  vir- 
tually compelled  his  resignation  from  the  presidency. 

When  Wiley  and  I  were  made  physicians  in  name,  Concern- 
medical  science  was  still  in  the  medieval  period,  mg  . 
almost  nothing  being  known  of  what  constitutes 
modern  medicine.  The  existence  of  microscopic 
organisms  in  connection  with  disease  was  but  dimly 
recognized,  and  the  natural  history  of  these  creatures 
not  understood.  The  word  "bacteriology"  still 
slumbered  in  the  Greek  lexicon,  its  component  parts 
widely  separated.  Moreover,  the  science  of  pharma- 
cology had  yet  to  be  developed,  the  effect  of  medicine 
on  the  human  organism  being  then  mainly  a  matter 
of  experience  and  guesswork.  Antiseptic  surgery 
was  an  unknown  art;  when  a  surgeon  cut  into  the 

C  1473 


The  Days  of  a  Man  £1875 

human  body,  he  took  his  chances  on  gangrene,  blood 
poisoning,  and  other  ills  he  could  neither  foresee 
nor  avert.  Anatomy  was  studied  in  savage  fashion 
in  crowded,  unventilated  rooms  by  a  class  of  stu- 
dents who,  in  general,  seemed  to  care  little  for 
personal  hygiene.  Nursing  was  largely  experimental, 
though  it  often  reflected  the  fine  spirit  shown  by 
many  physicians,  especially  by  the  beloved  "family 
doctor/' 

Great  At  about  this  time,  however,  certain  investigators 

discoveries  jia(j  initiated  researches  destined  to  base  the  art 
of  medicine  on  solid  science.  In  London,  Tyndall 
was  making  his  studies  of  microbes  at  rest  in  dust 
or  floating  in  the  air;  Lister  of  Edinburgh  had 
shown  the  amazing  results  to  be  derived  from  clean 
hands,  pure  air,  and  antiseptics;  at  Paris,  Pasteur, 
greatest  of  them  all,  was  beginning  his  work  on  the 
mildew  of  silkworms,  finding  it  a  problem  of  biology 
and  not  of  chemistry,  as  the  blight  proved  to  be  a 
parasitic  plant.  The  net  result  of  all  this  effort  was 
the  discovery  of  myriads  of  animal  and  plant  organ- 
isms, too  minute  for  the  naked  eye,  but  readily 
studied  under  the  microscope  and  easily  reared  in 
artificial  cultures.  All  phenomena  of  fermentation, 
putrefaction,  and  infectious  disease  were  then  seen 
to  be  due  to  the  presence  and  growth  of  such  infini- 
tesimal creatures.  Pasteur,  for  instance,  discovered 
that  fermentation  was  not  spontaneous  souring,  but 
"life  without  air,"  the  organisms  breathing  and  di- 
gesting in  sugar  solution.  Tyndall  pictured  a  battle- 
field as  a  gigantic  breeding  place  of  the  germs  of 
putrefaction  which,  if  visible,  would  appear  as  a 
vulture  horde  infinitely  more  destructive  than  any 
aggregation  of  birds  of  prey.  Linnaeus  once  sug- 

C  148  3 


18753  Hope  of  Advancement 

gested  that  three  flies  (with  their  progeny)  would 
devour  a  dead  horse  more  quickly  than  a  lion ;  but 
three  bacilli  would  do  the  work  even  more  rapidly 
and  more  completely  than  any  number  of  flies. 

In  1877  I  wrote  for  The  Dial  a  review  of  Tyndall's  Floating 
"  Floating  Matter  in  the  Air,"  remarking  that  now  ™atte: in 

fe,  /-i  i  .        the  air 

we  were  beginning  to  find  out  what  our  enemies 
were,  we  should  be  able  to  fight  them.  That  state- 
ment proved  prophetically  true;  medicine  at  present 
stands  on  the  firing  line  of  science,  and  in  no  depart- 
ment of  human  knowledge  has  the  forward  movement 
been  more  sound  or  more  impressive. 


In  Indianapolis,  for  the  first  time  since  leaving 
Cornell,  I  felt  that  my  work  was  being  appreciated, 
not  only  by  my  students  —  who  were  always  en- 
thusiastic —  but  also  by  the  powers  in  control. 
Ambition,  however,  impelled  me  toward  university  Efforts 
work,  and  I  had  no  desire  to  remain  in  a  high  school.  {°^  •, 
I  therefore  used  to  envy  my  friend  Snow,  already  position 
established,  and  for  a  lifetime,  in  a  college  good 
enough  to  call  forth  his  best  work.  My  removal  to 
Butler  I  regarded  as  temporary  only,  though  useful 
as  restoring  my  college  foothold,  lost  for  the  time 
on  leaving  Cornell  and  Lombard.  I  accordingly 
made  numerous  though  unsuccessful  efforts  to  secure 
a  position  in  larger  institutions  —  among  them 
Purdue,  where  Wiley  vainly  tried  to  organize  a 
Natural  History  department  of  which  I  had  been 
promised  the  headship. 

This  disappointment  was  only  one  of  several  at 
about  the  same  period.     Before  leaving  Appleton 

C  H9  3 


The  Days  of  a  Man  £1875 

Wisconsin  I  had  been  assured  of  an  appointment  as  professor 
of  Zoology  in  the  University  of  Wisconsin,  Augustus 
L.  Smith  of  Appleton,  a  personal  friend,  being  the 
president  of  the  board  of  trustees  of  the  university 
and  possessed  of  large  personal  influence.  But  the 
governor  of  the  state  failed  to  reappoint  him  for  the 
coming  term.  I  thus  lost  my  "friend  at  court,"  and 
Dr.  Edward  A.  Birge  of  Harvard,  a  man  no  older 
than  I  and  admirably  fitted  for  the  work,  was  elected 
to  the  coveted  place.  This  was  the  greatest  of  my 
disappointments,  for  the  University  of  Wisconsin 
seemed  to  me  the  most  typical  representative  of  the 
state  university  system  of  the  whole  country.  As  I 
write,  Dr.  Birge  (after  forty-five  years  of  devoted 
service)  has  become  president  of  the  institution, 
succeeding  the  gifted  geologist,  Dr.  Charles  R.  Van 
Hise,  whose  sudden  death  left  a  great  gap  in  the 
ranks  of  educational  leaders. 

Princeton  Meanwhile  another  prospect  opened,  to  be  suddenly 
closed  for  a  peculiar  reason.  From  Dr.  James 
McCosh,  president  of  Princeton,  I  received  a  letter 
stating  that  he  had  my  name  under  consideration 
for  the  professorship  of  Zoology,  and  asking  for 
some  evidence  of  fitness  besides  my  youthful  booklet 
on  the  Vertebrates  of  the  Eastern  United  States. 
This  request  I  fulfilled  to  the  best  of  my  ability,  and 
the  correspondence  proceeded  until  Dr.  McCosh 
wished  me  to  "unbosom"  myself  on  religious  matters. 
Still  under  the  influence  of  Agassiz's  philosophic 
views,  I  made  what  I  regarded  as  a  conservative 
and  reasonable  response  which  I  thought  would  be 
satisfactory.  It  proved  inadequate,  however;  at 
least  I  did  not  again  hear  from  McCosh,  and  a  much 
older  man,  George  Macloskie,  unquestionably  ortho- 

c  1503 


1878]  University  Ambitions 

dox  and  innocent  of  any  disturbing  knowledge  of 
Biology,  was  brought  over  from  Scotland  to  fill  the 
vacant  place.  Afterward  McCosh  himself  became 
an  evolutionist,  but  of  an  a  'priori^  logical,  ultra- 
Ulster  type,  not  much  influenced  by  facts  of  nature. 

Having  failed  to  secure  the  Princeton  professorship, 
in  1876  I  became  a  candidate  for  a  similar  position  at 
Vassar,  and  afterwards  for  one  at  Williams,  but  with- 
out avail.  The  president  of  Vassar  kindly  wrote  that 
he  "suffered  from  the  embarrassment  of  riches,"  which 
afforded  me  only  moderate  consolation ! 

My  name  was  next  presented  to  the  University  Michigan 
of  Michigan,  but  President  Angell  said  that  although 
my  recommendations  in  Zoology  were  of  the  highest, 
and  in  Botany  good,  those  concerning  Geology  and 
Physiology  were  less  complete.  Moreover,  they 
were  "getting  along  pretty  well"  as  they  were, 
without  an  expert  in  any  of  those  subjects.  This 
case  illustrated  the  lack  of  specialization  even  in  the 
state  universities  of  that  period,  and  the  satisfaction 
of  their  executives  in  being  able  to  "get  along" 
without  trained  teachers  of  science. 

At  about  the  same  time  I  was  selected  for  the  Cincinnati 
professorship  of  Natural  History  in  the  University 
of  Cincinnati  by  the  acting  president,  Dr.  Henry 
Turner  Eddy,  my  excellent  teacher  in  applied 
mathematics  at  Cornell.  But  the  then  board  of 
trustees  failed  to  ratify,  giving  as  the  more  or  less 
legitimate  reason  that  they  already  had  among 
their  dozen  or  so  professors  three  from  Cornell  — 
Eddy,  Frank  W.  Clarke,  and  my  classmate,  Edward 
W.  Hyde.  One  member,  it  is  reported,  went  even 
farther,  remarking  that  they  had  a  professor  of 
"History,"  and  he  ought  to  carry  the  "Natural 


The  Days  of  a  Man  £1878 

History "  as  well.  When  the  chair  again  became 
vacant  a  few  years  later  and  was  offered  to  me,  I 
recommended  my  student  and  colleague,  Gilbert, 
who  was  promptly  chosen. 

Meanwhile  efforts  were  made  each  year  by  Dr. 
Wilder  and  others  to  get  me  back  to  Cornell,  but 
the  positions  suggested  were  for  one  reason  or 
another  never  quite  definitely  offered. 
imperial  In  1878  I  was  attracted  by  the  prospect  of  a  career 
which  appealed  delightfully  to  my  spirit  of  ad- 
venture, as  my  Cornell  friend,  Yatabe,  who  had 
become  professor  of  Botany  in  the  new  Imperial 
University  of  Tokyo,  tried  to  secure  me  for  the  chair 
of  Zoology  in  the  same  institution.  While  waiting 
for  a  possible  appointment  I  read  all  the  available 
books  on  the  educational  system  of  Japan.  These 
were  not  very  encouraging,  because  instruction 
there  seemed  to  be  bound  by  tradition,  with  very 
little  hope  for  freedom  of  teaching  except  through 
the  influence  of  the  foreign  scholars  called  to  different 
chairs  in  the  university.  But  the  charms  of  Japan 
outweighed  any  dread  of  bureaucracy  I  may  have 
felt. 

Before  the  matter  was  settled,  however,  Yatabe 
became  head  of  the  new  Imperial  Normal  School, 
and  the  university  selected  for  the  position  to  which 
I  aspired  Dr.  Edward  S.  Morse,  a  teacher  whom  I 
had  known  and  greatly  admired  at  Penikese.  Morse 
was  thirteen  years  older  than  I,  a  favorite  student 
of  Agassiz,  and  singularly  well  fitted  for  the  position 
in  question,  not  only  on  account  of  his  extensive 
training  in  Zoology,  but  also  because  of  his  extraor- 
dinary cleverness  in  drawing  and  his  fine  appreci- 
ation of  Japanese  art,  especially  ceramics.  His 

C  152  3 


Every  Candidacy  Unsuccessful 

blackboard  drawings  made  with  both  hands  were 
a  constant  delight  to  his  students  everywhere. 

Looking  back  over  these  various  experiences,  I 
am  reminded  that  I  never  got  anything  I  tried  for. 
And  it  further  occurs  to  me  that  for  this  there  were  Handicaps 
three  reasons  which  I  did  not  realize  at  the  time: 
I  was  bent  on  being  a  specialist  in  Zoology,  I  had 
been  trained  at  Cornell,  a  fountain  head  of  edu- 
cational and  other  heresies,  and  I  was  a  "Western 
man,"  though  not  yet  aware  of  the  fact  myself. 
Afterward  these  same  features  seemed  to  appeal  to 
university  authorities  and  they,  in  turn,  sought  me 
out. 


C  153  3 


CHAPTER  SEVEN 


IN  the  summer  of  1876  I  set  out  to  explore  the  fish 
fauna  of  the  streams  of  Georgia-,  a  large  region  from 
which  practically  no  records  had  ever  been  made. 
For  this  trip  I  took  with  me  my  wife  and  young 
Gilbert,  who  had  just  graduated  from  the  Indian- 
apolis High  School,  and  who,  under  Copeland's 
influence,  had  turned  toward  Natural  History.  He 
proved  to  be  the  keenest  and  most  exact  student  I 
have  ever  had,  excelling  as  a  scientific  critic. 

The  first  copy  of  my  "Manual  of  Vertebrates" 
arrived  just  as  we  were  leaving  home.  Stopping 
at  Livingston,  Kentucky,  for  a  little  study  of  Rock 
Castle  River,  we  caught  a  large  eel  —  Anguilla 
rostrata  —  which  we  identified  by  the  Manual  — 
the  first  species,  therefore,  to  be  so  honored.  After- 
ward we  built  a  fire  in  the  woods  and  roasted  the 
fish,  which  was  fat  and  toothsome. 

A  little  farther  on  we  came  into  London,  county 
seat  of  Laurel,  where  a  large  political  gathering  was 
being  held  jointly  by  the  two  opposing  parties.  At 
this  meeting  the  competing  candidates  for  the  gov- 
ernorship,  John  Marshall  Harian  and  James  Bennett 
McCreary,  debated  in  friendly  fashion.  If  I  re- 
member rightly,  they  even  shared  a  room  together 
in  the  little  rustic  inn.  Both  were  able  men,  but 
Harian,  the  Republican,  knew  that  he  had  not  the 
slightest  chance  of  election,  and  McCreary  indeed 
carried  the  day.  The  latter  afterward  had  an 
honorable  career  in  the  United  States  Senate.  Har- 

C  1543 


1876]     Headquarters  at  Rome,  Georgia 

Ian  was  later  appointed  to  the  Supreme  Court  of 
the  United  States,  where  it  was  his  function  to 
prepare  and  read,  in  1896,  the  final  decision  which 
saved  Stanford  University,  for  which  reason  all 
Stanford  men  and  women  should  think  of  him  with 
gratitude. 

On  the  way  south  through  Tennessee  we  visited  Lookout 
Lookout   Mountain,   a   noble   plateau  with   almost 
vertical  sides,  as  the  hard  limestone  on  top  saves 
it  from  rain  erosion,  and  the  Tennessee  River,  mak-  Rid& 
ing  a  wide  sweep  around,  has  cut  away  the  softer 
rock  and  removed  the  talus  which  otherwise  would 
naturally  gather  at  its  foot. 

Crossing  the  neighboring  Missionary  Ridge,  a  noted 
battle  ground  of  the  Civil  War,  we  came  across 
several  little  darkies  in  the  persimmon  trees  and 
were  led  by  them  to  a  school  where  the  colored 
teacher  was  struggling  with  the  exports  of  Maine 
as  laid  down  in  the  geography.  After  a  little  while 
he  suddenly  turned  to  me  and  said:  "And  now, 
Boss,  won't  you  say  something  to  'scourage  us?" 

Our  working  headquarters  we  established  at  Rome, 
Georgia,  at  the  junction  of  the  red  waters  of  the 
Etowah  (locally  "High  Tower")  from  the  east,  and 
the  clear  Oostenaula  from  Missionary  Ridge  on  the 
north.  Here  I  encountered  a  custom  common  in 
the  South,  each  product  of  the  union  of  two  nearly 
equal  streams  receiving  a  new  name.  Thus  the  two 
rivers  at  Rome  form  the  Coosa;  this,  running  south- 
ward, joins  the  Tallapoosa  to  form  the  Alabama, 
which,  in  turn,  uniting  with  the  Tombigbee,  helps 
to  form  the  Mobile. 

Only  eleven  years  had  passed  since  the  Civil 
War,  and  many  of  the  inhabitants  of  the  region 

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The  Days  of  a  Man  £1876 

were  still  very  bitter.  "We  have  been  puked  on 
blue/'  coarsely  explained  our  host,  to  justify  a  cer- 
tain coolness  of  welcome.  They  hanged  a  negro 
during  our  stay,  and  people  from  the  whole  county 
turned  out  to  see  the  execution,  although  steady- 
headed  citizens  freely  admitted  that  a  white  man 
would  not  have  received  the  extreme  penalty  for 
white  the  offense  in  question.  Several  of  the  wagons  were 
and  crowded  full,  often  with  white  men  and  women 
sitting  on  the  laps  of  the  blacks  —  for  to  this  there 
was  no  objection  "so  long  as  the  nigger  knew  his 
place."  Indeed,  one  might  be  as  friendly  with  a 
negro  as  with  an  intelligent  dog,  where  no  pre- 
sumption of  equality  was  involved.  But  to  eat  at 
the  same  table  —  never! 

The  day  of  the  hanging  we  left  town  for  a  trip  up 
the  river,  and  on  the  way  noticed  many  men  coming 
in  armed  with  rifles.  It  later  appeared  that  some 
one  had  started  a  senseless  rumor  that  a  negro  up- 
rising would  take  place.  The  nerves  of  the  people 
were  consequently  on  edge,  and  the  accidental  dis- 
charge of  a  musket  by  a  guard  produced  a  panic  in 
which  several  persons  were  trampled,  two  or  three  of 
them  to  death. 

From  Rome  we  traveled  eastward  to  the  Chat- 

tahoochee,  a  fine  large  river;  yet  its  muddy  banks 

thick  with  canes  and  sometimes  with  grapevines  and 

briers  made  the  use  of  the  net  impossible  except  in 

the    upper    reaches    about    Gainesville.      Through 

Ocmuigee  Atlanta  we  crossed  to  the  Ocmulgee  Basin,  where 

Basin      at    Fiat    skoals   we   foun(±   tfo   South   River  very 

convenient  for  our  purposes.  But  it  took  some 
effort  to  make  the  proprietor  of  the  large  factory 
there  understand  that  we  were  really  messengers  of 

C  156] 


1876]  Fishes  of  Ohio 


peace,  wanting  nothing  but  the  small  fishes  which 
infest  the  shallows  below  his  little  cascade. 

On  our  way  to  Flat  Shoals  we  saw  on  the  left  stone 
side  of  the  train  what  seemed  to  be  a  gigantic  boulder,  Mountain 
a  thousand  feet  in  diameter.  This  was  Stone  Moun- 
tain, of  which  we  had  never  before  heard.  Greatly 
impressed,  we  left  the  train  at  the  first  station  and 
went  back  to  climb  the  stupendous  rock.  For  not- 
withstanding its  size  it  looks  like  a  boulder,  al- 
though, as  a  matter  of  fact,  it  must  owe  its  stark 
isolation  to  erosion  of  the  softer  deposits  of  which 
it  was  once  the  core.  It  appears  that  Borglum,  the 
sculptor,  began  the  work  of  carving  on  its  majestic 
side  a  panoramic  frieze  symbolic  of  incidents  of  the 
Civil  *  rar,  an  effort  checked  by  the  war  in  Europe. 

Our  expedition  as  a  whole  was  extremely  success- 
ful, and  its  results  were  embodied  in  a  paper  en- 
titled "The  Fishes  of  Upper  Georgia,"  the  first  of 
my  numerous  monographic  reviews  of  local 
faunas. 

In  December  I  was  called  to  Columbus,  Ohio,  by 
John  H.  Klippart,  State  Fish  Commissioner,  who 
wished  me  to  write  an  account  of  the  food  fishes  of 
Ohio.  This  I  did  fairly  well  during  the  course  of 
the  winter. 

Klippart  spoke  frankly  to  me  of  the  difficulties  Hayes 
which  then  beset  his  friend  and  neighbor,  Ruther-  ™flden 
ford  B.  Hayes,  the  former  governor.     Mr.  Hayes 
was  about  to  start  for  Washington  to  take  his  seat 
as  President  of  the  United  States,  his  title  clouded 
by. an  election  of  doubtful  validity,  forced  through 
by  a  hard-minded  group  of  politicians  whom  he  could 
never  honorably  serve  or  please.     A  man  of  high 

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The  Days  of  a  Man  1:1876 

ability  and  unblemished  character,  he  made  no 
compromises  with  corruption  or  injustice.  He  was 
therefore  not  at  ease  in  the  presidential  chair,  and 
suffered  the  contumely  cast  upon  him  by  dissatisfied 
partisans.  I  myself  had  voted  for  Tilden,  having  — 
since  1872  —  lost  all  confidence  in  the  dominant  or 
Conkling  faction  of  the  Republican  party.  And  it 
seemed  to  me,  everything  considered,  that  Tilden 
was  fairly  elected,  but  that  his  own  high  sense  of 
duty  prevented  him  from  contesting  the  final  de- 
cision. To  have  done  so  in  those  critical  times 
might  have  led  to  bloodshed  and  perhaps  to  civil 
war. 

Four  years  earlier,  when  Grant  was  nominated 
for  the  second  time,  I  should  have  cast  my  ballot 
for  Greeley  had  I  not  been  too  recent  an  arrival  in 
Illinois  to  have  the  privilege  of  voting.  I  thought 
then  —  as  I  do  now  —  that  moderation  and  con- 
ciliation toward  the  South  would  have  been  a  wise 
and  successful  policy.  But  "waving  the  bloody 

Greeley9 s     shirt"   was   preferred   by   the   Republican   leaders. 

defeat  ^nd  the  argument  that  the  Republican  party  had 
saved  the  Union  was  used  as  a  cover  by  which  the 
financial  interests  of  the  Northern  cities  got  a 
strangle-hold  on  American  public  affairs,  which  they 
have  never  entirely  relinquished. 

In  connection  with  my  studies  for  the  Ohio  re- 
port, I  visited  the  venerable  physician  and  accom- 
plished naturalist,  Jared  P.  Kirtland,  at  his  home  in 
Cleveland.  Dr.  Kirtland  was  the  author  of  an  ex- 
cellent memoir  on  the  Fishes  of  Ohio.  He  was 
much  interested  in  the  task  I  had  been  set,  and 
gladly  turned  over  to  me  the  remainder  of  his  col- 
lections. Later  in  the  year  1  was  fortunate  in 

C  158  3 


1876]  A  Great  Invention 

finding  myself  the  guest  of  another  of  the  older 
naturalists.  Dr.  Philo  R.  Hoy  of  Racine,  a  fine- 
spirited  worker  who  also  gave  me  his  fish  collection. 


In  the  early  summer  of  1877  I  made  my  first 
visit  to  Washington,  where  I  became  acquainted 
with  Professor  Baird,  Dr.  Theodore  Gill,  Dr.  Elliott 
Coues,  Dr.  William  H.  Dall,  Robert  Ridgway,  and 
the  rest  of  the  scientific  coterie  at  the  Smithsonian 
Institution,  of  all  of  whom  I  shall  say  more  by  and 
by.  In  the  course  of  my  stay  the  new  invention  of  invention 
Professor  Alexander  Graham  Bell,  the  telephone  or 
"far  speaker/'  was  brought  over  to  the  Smith- 
sonian  to  be  tested.  Connecting  the  basement  with 
the  fourth  story,  we  were  greatly  amazed  and  de- 
lighted to  find  that  we  could  hear  over  the  wires. 
In  case  of  doubt,  one  would  put  his  head  out  of 
the  window  and  call:  "I'm  talking  through  the 
telephone;  can  you  hear  me  now?" 

In  Sacramento  thirty-five  years  later  I  told  this 
story  by  the  Poulsen  Wireless  through  the  air  to 
an  operator  at  Stockton,  forty-eight  miles  away, 
and  he  reported  it  accurately  back  to  me.  After- 
ward, by  the  same  system  (which  operates  on  the 
principle  of  the  tuning  fork)  messages  were  carried 
enormous  distances  through  the  air,  from  Wash- 
ington to  Honolulu  and  Panama,  and  recently 
farther,  I  believe. 

In  1916,  in  connection  with  an  effort  to  illustrate  Speaking 
telephonic  communication  across  the  continent,   I  a£°ss 
was  asked  to  give  a  short  lecture  on  world  peace  continent 
from  my  home  at  Stanford  to  the  members  of  the 

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The  Days  of  a  Man  £1877 

Quill  Club  in  session  in  New  York  City.  The  ap- 
plause, properly  timed,  came  back  with  singular 
and  uncanny  effect,  but  the  words  of  the  chairman 
who  introduced  me  I  heard  distinctly.  To  add  a 
bit  of  local  California  color,  connection  had  also 
been  made  with  the  Cliff  House  in  San  Francisco, 
so  that  my  audience  could  hear  at  the  same  time 
both  me  and  the  surf  of  the  Pacific. 

Priming  Another  remarkable  invention,  the  first  type- 
a  letter  writer,  was  sent  to  the  Smithsonian  to  be  tested  at 
about  the  same  time  as  the  telephone.  On  it  I 
wrote  to  my  father,  imagining  with  enjoyment  his 
surprise  at  receiving  a  letter  in  print.  And  for  a  num- 
ber of  years  afterward  the  typewriter  was  a  curiosity 
rather  than  the  business  necessity  it  has  now  become. 

In  August  of  this  year  I  set  out  on  a  second  sum- 
mer  expl°rati°n  m  trie  South,  this  time  with  a 
larger  party.  At  Morristown,  Tennessee,  Dudley 
and  I  (coming  by  rail  from  the  East)  were  joined 
by  Brayton,  Gilbert,  and  three  other  students  — 
my  cousin,  Edward  Ely  of  Sycamore,  Illinois,  John 
H.  Oliver,  since  a  well-known  surgeon  of  Indianapolis, 
and  Wade  Ritter,  afterward  an  attorney  in  Colo- 
rado, whose  son  later  followed  me  to  Stanford 
University.  These  five  had  tramped  across  from 
Rock  Castle  River,  past  Cumberland  Gap,  to  meet 
Dudley  and  me. 

On  the  way  through  Virginia  I  sat  opposite  a 
young  woman  who  was  wearing  two  or  three  medals 
earned  for  "good  deportment"  at  a  woman's  college 
in  Christiansburg.  Soon  she  began  to  talk,  asked 
me  to  share  her  lunch,  and  displayed  a  number  of 
brass  buttons  cut  from  the  uniforms  of  boys  in  the 
C  160] 


1877]  The  Land  of  the  Sky 

neighboring  military  school  of  Emory  and  Henry 
College.  When  I  left  the  train  she  inquired  as  to 
my  profession.  "Teacher,"  said  I.  With  a  dis- 
concerted look  she  replied:  "Oh,  I  thought  you 
were  a  drummer!" 

From  the  end  of  the  branch  road  above  Morris- 
town  our  party  walked  up  the  French  Broad,  the 
most  picturesque  of  Southern  rivers,  through  the 
Great  Smoky  Mountains  to  Asheville,  North  Caro- 
lina. About  Asheville  they  lovingly  call  the  French  About 
Broad  country  "The  Land  of  the  Sky,"  a  name  Asb™11' 
borrowed  from  the  title  of  a  novel  by  "Christian 
Reid,"  which  deals  with  that  region.  The  people 
there  seemed  a  bit  jealous  of  the  Colorado  Moun- 
tains —  higher,  they  admitted,  but  certainly  not 
as  beautiful. 

The  early  stories  of  Mary  Noailles  Murfree 
("Charles  Egbert  Craddock")  dealt  with  the  moun- 
tain folk  of  the  upper  French  Broad,  the  peculiar 
minor  key  of  their  lives  being  sympathetically  re- 
produced. Among  these  I  particularly  recall  the 
pathetic  "Harnt  that  Walks  Chilhowee,"  "The 
Prophet  of  the  Great  Smoky  Mountains,"  and 
"The  Despot  of  Broomsedge  Cove." 

Now  a  noted  tourists'  resort,  though  merely  a 
mountain  village  at  the  time  of  my  first  visit,  Ashe- 
ville is  also  the  county  seat  of  Buncombe,  a  name 
which  has  enriched  our  language.    Back  in  the  'so's,  Buncombe 
Buncombe  sent  a  flamboyant  orator  to  the  state  Coun*y 
assembly   at    Raleigh.     After   a   flight   of  fatuous 
eloquence  he  explained  to  his  colleagues  that  they 
need  pay  no  special  attention;   he  was  "only  talk- 
ing for  Buncombe."     The  word  therefore  came  to 
be  used  for  pretentious  and  empty  discourses  aimed 

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The  Days  of  a  Man  £1877 

at  a  home  audience.  In  1859  Thoreau  said  that 
John  Brown  was  "not  talking  to  Buncombe  or  his 
constituents  anywhere." 

But  to  get  back  to  my  party.  Leaving  Asheville, 
we  next  followed  to  its  source  the  Swannanoa,  a 
charming  tributary  of  the  French  Broad,  and  climbed 
Mount  Mitchell  in  the  Great  Smokies,  the  highest 
mountain  east  of  the  Rockies. 

Mitchell's  This  wild,  rough  mass  locally  known  as  Black 
Peak  Mountain,  beset  with  dark  balsam  firs,  soft  moss, 
and  many  subalpine  plants,  rises  6711  feet  above 
tidewater  —  that  is,  about  500  feet  higher  than 
Mount  Washington.  It  does  not,  however,  give  the 
same  impression  of  altitude  because  of  the  richness 
of  its  vegetation  under  a  warmer  sky.  On  its  tower- 
ing summit,  under  an  overhanging  rock,  we  passed 
a  night. 

[As  a  matter  of  fact  it  has  two  summits  of  about 
equal  height,  Mitchell's  Peak  and  Clingman's  Dome, 
named  respectively  for  Professor  Elisha  Mitchell  of 
the  University  of  North  Carolina,  and  General  T.  L. 
Clingman.  The  controversy  between  these  two 
gentlemen  as  to  which  top  is  the  higher  Mitchell 
closed  dramatically  by  a  fatal  fall  from  one  of  his 
cliffs,  and  on  the  very  summit  of  the  Peak,  after  a 
picturesque  funeral,  he  was  buried  in  a  rock-hewn 
sepulcher  over  which  the  wind  in  the  balsams  sighs 
a  perpetual  requiem.] 

The  Returning  then  to  Asheville,  we  started  on  a  long 

and  picturesque  stage  trip  through  the  hopefully 
named  hamlet  of  Travellers  Rest  down  to  Green- 
ville in  South  Carolina.  Here  and  at  Spartanburg 
we  explored  the  headwaters  of  the  Saluda  and 
Ennoree,  the  latter  a  tributary  of  the  Broad  which 
C  162  ] 


1877]  Rivers  of  Georgia 

unites  lower  down  with  the  former  to  make  the 
Santee.  Afterward,  passing  westward,  we  collected 
from  the  headwaters  of  the  Savannah,  Chatta- 
hoochee,  and  Oconee  to  Atlanta. 

In  Atlanta  we  called  on  Alexander  H.  Stephens,  late 
Vice-President  of  the  Confederate  States,  who  enter- 
tained us  with  interesting  reminiscences.  Stephens 
was  a  man  of  dwarfish  stature  but  powerful  mind; 
he  had  been  strongly  opposed  to  secession  and  all  its 
ways,  yet  when  his  own  state  (Georgia)  went  out  of 
the  Union,  he  felt,  as  did  Robert  E.  Lee  and  others 
placed  in  a  similar  position,  that  he  had  no  alterna- 
tive but  to  espouse  the  Confederate  cause. 

We  next  brought  up  at  Rome,  my  former  station  Rome 
on  the  Etowah.  Here  our  gruff  host  of  1876,  re-  again 
ferring  to  Gilbert,  remarked,  "I  see  you  keep  the 
same  cub."  In  Rome  we  secured  a  number  of 
young  mocking  birds,  of  which  two,  Mimus  and 
Charmian,  developed  into  superb  singers.  Once  I 
put  a  tame  brown  thrasher,  an  excellent  songster 
not  much  inferior  to  the  mocking  bird,  into  the 
cage  with  Mimus.  The  thrasher  was  the  larger,  but 
Mimus  behaved  like  a  veritable  tyrant,  never  al- 
lowing him  to  sing  at  all. 

Returning  northward,  we  climbed  Kenesaw  Moun- 
tain, fought  over  in  the  Civil  War,  and  then  moved 
on  to  examine  the  fishes  of  Chickamauga  River, 
similarly  famous. 

The  large  collections  made  on  this  trip  were  duly 
described  by  Jordan  and  Brayton  in  Bulletin  12  of 
the  United  States  National  Museum. 

At  Christmas,  Baird  placed  in  my  hands  for 
critical  study  all  the  specimens  of  salmon  and  trout 

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The  Days  of  a  Man  £1878 

Trout       which  had  been  gathered  by  the  Pacific  Railway 
of  ^e       Survey  of  the  'so's  and  by  subsequent  collectors, 

Northwest  J  .  J  •          i_    •  r  u 

the  most  important  series  being  from  the  new 
hatchery  on  the  Clackamas  River  in  Oregon.  Pre- 
vious investigators  with  inadequate  material  had 
greatly  exaggerated  the  number  of  actual  species, 
and  the  whole  matter  was  in  utter  confusion.  My 
tentative  conclusions,  published  in  1878,  were  after- 
ward supplemented  by  the  intensive  operations 
(soon  to  be  discussed)  of  Jordan  and  Gilbert  in 
1880.  Of  the  salmon  there  are  five  very  distinct 
species  on  the  Pacific  Coast ;  among  the  trout,  species 
are  numerous  and  very  closely  related,  shading  off 
one  into  another. 

^  Baird  asked  to  have  common  names  attached  to 
the  different  forms.  For  the  trout  of  the  coastwise 
streams,  the  Salmo  irideus  of  Dr.  W.  P.  Gibbons,  I 
naturally  suggested  "  Rainbow  Trout,"  and  I  may 
note  that  the  big  fish  of  the  river  mouths  and  chan- 
nels, the  "Steelhead,"  is  merely  the  sea-run  adult 
of  the  "  Rainbow."  I  should  further  explain  that 
the  so-called  "Rainbow  Trout,"  since  distributed 
the  world  over  from  the  hatchery  at  Baird  on  the 
McCloud  River,  is  a  distinct  species  —  Salmo  shasta 
—  which  for  convenience  I  call  "  Shasta  Rainbow." 

Another  fine  form  with  bright  crimson  spots  — 
Salvelinus  malma  —  had  been  sent  to  Washington 
from  the  upper  Sacramento,  with  the  comment  that 
the  landlady  at  Upper  Soda  Springs  declared  it 
looked  "like  a  regular  Dolly  Varden."  This  likeness 
to  the  "plump,  coquettish  little  minx  "of  Dickens' 
"  Barnaby  Rudge"  pleased  Baird,  and  he  remarked: 
"That's  a  good  name;  call  it  Dolly  Varden."  And 
Dolly  Varden  it  remains  to  this  day! 

C  164] 


1878]  Explorations  Continued 


The  following  summer  (1878)  I  went  on  another  Second 
trip  to  the  South  and  with  a  still  larger  group  of 
companions.  These  included  Brayton,  Gilbert,  Bar- 
ton W.  Evermann  and  his  wife  —  both  workers  in 
my  laboratory  at  Butler  and  later  at  Bloomington, 
while  with  Evermann  himself  my  scientific  relations 
have  been  continuous  —  Miss  Clapp,  whose  acquain- 
tance I  had  made  at  Penikese,  and  several  excellent 
young  students.  Among  the  last  were  Charles  Mer- 
rill, afterward  partner  in  the  well-known  publishing 
firm,  the  Bobbs-Merrill  Company  of  Indianapolis, 
Charles  Moores,  a  cousin  of  the  former,  also  a  sincere 
and  delightful  mountain  lover,  and  Horace  G.  Smith, 
a  genial  young  fellow. 

This  year  our  line  of  march  lay  from  Somerset,  Ken- 
tucky, past  High  Bridge  and  the  quaint  "Shaker" 
settlement  at  Pleasant  Hill,  to  Cumberland  Gap, 
thence  by  way  of  Jacksboro  and  Wolf  Creek  to  the 
French  Broad,  then  across  the  "Great  Smokies"  and 
Blue  Ridge  to  Rabun  Gap  and  the  Gorge  of  the 
Tallulah  in  northern  Georgia  —  550  miles  on  foot, 
besides  occasional  stretches  of  railway,  the  whole 
consuming  just  one  month's  time. 

For  a  little  while  one  day  an  elderly  lady  shared  A  tragic 
my  seat  in  the  train.     Entering  into  conversation,  situation 
she  recounted  an  experience  which  had  shadowed 
her  life  ever  since  the  Civil  War.     Her  plantation 
in  northern  Mississippi  lay  near  the  battlefield  of 
Shiloh,  between  the  two  opposing  armies.    A  young 
Union  sergeant  from  Ohio,  leader  of  a  little  picket 
guard,  used  to  come  sometimes  to  see  her  to  talk 


The  Days  of  a  Man  £1878 

about  his  mother  and  sister  and  show  their  pictures, 
while  she  listened  with  womanly  sympathy.  But 
one  day  when  her  brother,  a  Confederate  officer, 
was  in  the  house,  she  heard  him  and  his  companions 
laying  a  plan  to  entrap  the  little  company.  By 
and  by  the  young  Northerner  appeared  for  his 
usual  visit;  her  mind  was  now  torn  as  to  her  duty. 
Could  or  should  she  warn  the  boy?  Would  not  that 
be  disloyalty  to  the  Confederate  Cause?  Finally 
she  let  him  go  without  a  word.  Afterward  her 
brother's  men  brought  him  back  to  the  house  to 
die ;  and  the  question  as  to  whether  or  not  she  should 
have  spoken  had  ever  since  tortured  her  days. 
Change  At  Crab  Orchard  Springs,  Kentucky,  I  met  a 
y°unS  fellow  who  told  me  of  a  "freak"  in  his  town, 
a  chap  who  never  touched  whisky.  "Whisky  was 
good  if  you  didn't  take  too  much  of  it ;  everybody 
knew  that."  And  yet  thirty  years  later  Lincoln 
County  went  "dry"  by  its  own  vote.  The  rest  of 
Kentucky  and  the  rest  of  the  country  have  now  gone 
with  it.  They  say  that  "human  nature  does  not 
change."  True,  but  the  angle  of  vision  may  change 
relatively  quickly  and  mightily. 

After  various  other  experiences  in  the  Kentucky 
upland  we  reached  the  French  Broad.  Duplicat- 
ing now  the  trip  of  the  previous  summer,  including 
a  stay  at  Alexander's  charming  farm  on  the  river, 
and  another  night  on  Mount  Mitchell,  we  again 
followed  the  Swannanoa  back  to  Asheville.  Thence 
we  continued  our  walk  southward  and  westward, 
past  Brevard  and  Hendersonville,  along  the  upper 
French  Broad  nearly  to  its  sources  in  the  Blue 
Ridge  and  Nantahala. 

The  mountain  wall  of  the  Blue  Ridge  is  par- 
C  166] 


1878]  In  the  Blue  Ridge 

ticularly  delightful  because  of  its  masses  of  out- 
cropping white  quartzite  set  against  the  "piney 
woods"  and  for  its  heavy  growth  of  Rhododendron, 
Azalea,  and  Kalmia  —  the  "laurels"  of  the  moun- 
tain side.  Of  special  interest  to  us,  also,  was  the 
Spanish  Oak  —  ^uercus  falcata  —  the  most  attrac- 
tive of  all  the  many  forms  of  that  genus,  with  its  The 
long,  dagger-shaped  leaves.  On  the  road  we  straggled 
along  in  groups,  the  party  in  advance  marking  Trail 
every  fork  with  a  branch  of  Rhododendron  flowers, 
and  so  laying  out  "the  Rhododendron  Trail."  This 
precaution  was  constantly  necessary  in  a  region 
where  all  paths  diverge  and  very  few  lead  anywhere 
in  particular.  Most  of  them,  in  fact,  were  like 
Thoreau's  "Old  Marlborough  Road,"  merely 

...   a  direction  out  there, 

A  bare  possibility  of  going  somewhere, 

finally  "dwindling  to  a  squirrel  track  and  running 
up  a  tree." 

Passing  along  the  crest  of  the  Blue  Ridge,  we 
came  upon  many  beautiful  waterfalls  which  drop 
from  the  plateau  behind. 

Long  Fall,  High  Fall, 
Green  Fall,  Dry  Fall, 
Saluda  and  Conness  — 

sang  Smith,  our  topographical  poet,  omitting,  how- 
ever, the  still  more  romantic  Toxaway,  which  lies 
beyond.  One  day  we  climbed  the  lofty  bald  summit 
of  "Caesar's  Head,"  overlooking  the  picturesque 
valley  of  "Walhalla";  one  night  we  spent  around 
a  campfire  on  Whitesides,  a  flat-topped  quartzite 

C  167] 


The  Days  of  a  Man  £1878 

Smash  mountain.  Farther  on  we  splashed  across  War 
Woman  Creek  by  way  of  the  "  Smash  Wagon  Ford," 
noted  all  through  that  region;  and  rightly  named 
it  is,  for  in  the  middle  of  the  stream  one  comes  to  a 
jutting  shelf  of  rock  with  a  sudden  drop  of  four 
feet  or  more.  But  as  there  were  then  no  bridges 
anywhere  about,  and  no  other,  way  around,  it  was 
a  case  of  "Hobson's  choice." 

Another  day  still  took  us  through  Rabun  Gap 
to  the  headwaters  of  the  Savannah  in  Georgia,  and 
so  into  the  finest  mountain  gorge  of  the  whole  Ap- 
palachian chain,  that  of  the  Tallulah,  the  "terrible 
river"  of  the  Cherokees.  This  untamable  stream,  in 
a  course  of  three  miles  of  continuous  foam  and  with 
a  total  vertical  drop  of  1400  feet,  storms  down  what 
I  may  call  a  gigantic,  irregular  staircase  (or  broken, 
stratified,  inclined  plane)  of  white  quartzite  in  a 
series  of  innumerable  cascades  and  five  distinct 
cataracts,  cutting  meanwhile  progressively  deeper 
and  deeper  into  a  densely  wooded  chasm. 

Fails  of  The  several  falls,  moreover,  are  quite  unlike  each 
other  in  their  wild  beauty.  The  three  lower  ones 
we  found  almost  inaccessible  from  their  tangle  of 
grapevines  and  brambles.  Lodore,  the  uppermost 
and  least  interesting,  is  a  swift,  flumelike  rush  of 
forty  feet.  Tempestia  plunges  thirty  feet  straight 
down  its  cramped  channel  on  to  a  bench  of  harder 
rock,  whence  it  takes  a  clear  leap  of  fifty  more. 
The  wild  and  twisted  Hurricane,  eighty  feet  high, 
hurls  itself  against  the  chasm  wall  with  a  violent 
current  of  air.  Oceana  is  made  wonderfully  beauti- 
ful by  a  peculiarity  of  the  geological  formation. 
The  local  dip  of  the  quartzite  being  one  of  almost 
forty-five  degrees  to  the  southeast,  in  its  fourth  fall 

C  168  3 


1878]  Tallulah  Gorge 

the  river  slides  placidly  over  the  steeply  inclined 
surface  until,  about  halfway  down,  it  strikes  another 
hard  stratum  four  feet  higher  and  with  edge  set  at 
right  angles  to  the  preceding,  so  that  it  is  forced  to 
rise  to  pass  the  obstruction.  Bridal  Veil,  similar 
to  Oceana  though  lower  and  less  fine,  presents  its 
own  special  feature,  a  series  of  potholes  a  foot  or 
two  in  diameter  and  about  four  feet  deep,  worn  in 
the  solid  quartzite.  Just  below  it,  also,  the  vertical 
walls  of  the  chasm  rise  to  the  height  of  some  800 
feet,  higher  than  in  any  other  east  of  the  Royal 
Gorge  of  the  Arkansas  in  Colorado.  Thus  the  Tal- 
lulah  glen,  though  not  easily  reached  from  any- 
where, is  one  of  the  beauty  spots  of  the  South. 
Not  far  away  Toccoa  Fall,  a  perpendicular  leap  of 
1 86  feet  down  which  a  bright  little  stream  dashes 
itself  into  lacelike  spray,  adds  its  lesser  charm  to 
Rabun  County,  the  northeast  corner  and  most  at- 
tractive part  of  the  whole  state  of  Georgia. 

In  the  evening,  sitting  in  front  of  a  little  mountain  Natural 
cabin,  Brayton,  Gilbert,  or  I  would  give  a  talk  on 
some  phase  of  the  Natural  History  of  the  region  we 
had  that  day  passed  over.  The  Botany  was  always 
interesting,  and  the  Geology  usually  so.  These 
discussions  were  much  appreciated;  and  Evermann 
insists  that  he  then  learned  more  science  from  me 
on  the  road  than  in  my  laboratory  from  which  he 
finally  took  his  doctor's  degree.1 

As  we  went  our  way,  I  picked  up  the  following 
indigenous  song: 

1  In  a  letter  dated  August  7,  1919,  he  also  says:  "The  one  great  thing  in 
my  life  that  did  more  than  any  other  to  make  me  a  naturalist  was  that  summer 
with  you.  That  settled  the  matter  with  Mrs.  Evermann  and  myself.  We 
decided  then  and  there  to  be  your  students  a  little  longer,  and  we  have  never 
ceased  to  be  such  even  to  this  day." 

r.  169  3 


The  Days  of  a  Man  [1878 

Native  A  soldier  sat  by  the  road  one  day 

songs  And  he  was  looking  very  gay, 

For  on  his  back  was  a  bag  of  meal 
Which  he  had  stole*  from  an  old  tar-heel.1 

He  built  him  a  fire  to  bake  his  bread 
And  when  he  had  done  he  gayly  said: 
"Nothing  in  this  world  surpasses 
Good  old  corn  bread  and  sorghum  molasses. 

"In  Alabama  they  eat  peas, 

In  Tennessee  just  what  they  please, 

In  North  Carolina,  tar  and  rosin, 

But  Georgia  girls  eat  goobers2  and  sorghum.8 

"By  and  by,  by  and  by, 
Marry  a  girl  with  a  bright  blue  eye. 
Georgia  girls  there's  none  surpasses, 
For  they  are  fond  of  sorghum  molasses!" 

Patting  At  the  "Pine-laden  Inn  for  Collard,"  farther  on, 
we  hear(j  two  "patting  songs";  that  is,  songs  accom- 
panied by  rhythmical  slaps  on  the  thigh  to  mark 
time  in  dancing: 

Round  the  ring,  Miss  Ju'ly. 

Round  the  ring,  Miss  Ju'ly, 

O  long  summah  day! 

The  moon  shines  bright, 

The  stahs  look  light, 

O  look  away  ovah  yondah, 

See  some  pretty  little  y  all  ah  gal 

And  tell  'eh  how  you  love  heh! 


JA11U     L^ll       dl     11UVY     y\J\JL    1UVC     11CH 

Geo'gia  rabbit,  whoa,  whoa, 
Geo'gia  rabbit,  whoa; 
Stole  my  lovah,  whoa,  whoa, 
Stole  my  lovah,  whoa. 


1  A  native  of  North  Carolina.  2  Peanuts. 

8  The  broom  corn,  from  which  is  made  a  syrup  inferior  to  the  molasses  of 
the  sugar  cane  —  Saccbarwn  —  of  farther  south. 


1878]  Songs  of  Tennessee 

Gwine  t'  git  'nod  ah  one,  whoa,  whoa, 
Gwine  t'  git  'nod ah  one,  whoa, 
Just  like  t'  odah  one,  whoa,  whoa, 
Just  like  t'  odah  one,  whoa! 

The  religious  songs  of  the  black  folk  are  varied  Typical 
and  interesting,  though  frequently  incoherent  and 
irrelevant,  even  the  words  often  meaningless,  but 
the  melody  sometimes  exquisite.  The  best  are 
sung  in  a  strange  minor  key;  some  of  them,  like 
"Swing  Low,  Sweet  Chariot"  and  "Steal  Away" 
have  been  made  familiar  by  troupes  of  Jubilee 
Singers. 

The  following,  though  not  generally  known,  is  a 
typical  song  of  Tennessee : 

The  Gospel  train  am  comin', 
She's  comin'  round  the  cu've. 
I  hea*  her  whistles  tootin', 
She's  strainin'  every  ne've. 
Git  on  boa'd,  li'l  chillun, 
Dey's  room  for  many  a  moah. 
She's  landed  many  a  thousan* 
She'll  land  as  many  moah, 
She'll  stop  at  Inskip  station,  etc. 

And  a  touching  fragment  from  East  Tennessee  I 
shall  never  forget: 

I  hea'  my  chillun  callin'," 

I  see  their  wa'm  teahs  fallin', 

And  I-must-go. 
Foh  I  was  bawn  in  Geo'gia, 
My  chillun  live  in  Geo'gia, 

And  I-must-go. 

Other  refrains  were,  as  usual,  concerned  with  matters 
of  faith: 

C  171  3 


The  Days  of  a  Man  £1878 


Religious  Tis  the  old-time  religion, 

refrains  And  it's  good  enough  fo'  me, 

It  was  good  fo'  Paul  an'  Silas, 
And  it's  good  enough  fo'  me. 
It  was  good  fo'  Stiles  and  Kendall, 
And  it's  good  enough  fo'  me. 


I  tell  ye'  what  I  love  the  best, 

It  am  the  shouting  Methodest; 

Fse  Methodest  bred  an'  Methodest  bo'n, 

And  when  I  die  they's  a  Methodest  gone! 


Some  say  that  John  the  Baptist 
Was  nothin'  but  a  Jew, 
But  the  Holy  Bible  tells  us 
He  was  a  preachah,  too. 
Fse  listenin'  all  the  night  long, 
I'se  listenin'  all  the  day, 
I'se  listenin'  all  the  night  long, 
To  hea'  some  sinnah  pray. 

Beaufort  At  Toccoa  City  the  others  left  us,  while  Gilbert, 
Brayton,  the  Evermanns,  and  Miss  Clapp  went  on 
with  me  to  Beaufort,  North  Carolina,  where  we  spent 
a  month  or  so  in  the  study  of  fishes.  Beaufort  is  a 
picturesque  watering  place  close  to  the  open  ocean, 
but  protected  —  like  Venice  —  by  a  long  sand  spit. 
During  our  stay  we  lived  in  the  Atlantic  Hotel,  a 
mildly  fashionable  summer  resort.  Among  the 
boarders  was  a  stylish  young  woman  (not  so  young, 
however,  on  closer  inspection),  who  confided  to  us 
that  she  was  given  free  entertainment  on  condition 
of  making  herself  attractive  to  the  guests.  By 
Dr.  Brayton  she  was  christened  "Spurius  purpu- 
reus,"  for  reasons  easily  discerned  at  short  range.  A 

C  172] 


1878]  The  Dismal  Swamp 

The  offshore  spit,  which  follows  with  only  oc- 
casional breaks  the  whole  coastline  of  North  Caro- 
lina, is  made  up  of  material  first  washed  down  by 
streams  and  rains  from  the  adjacent,  low-lying, 
sandy  pine  woods,  to  be  then  hurled  back  by  the 
strong  currents  outside.  It  culminates  in  Cape 
Lookout  and  Cape  Hatteras,  the  latter  forming  the 
stormy  divide  between  north  and  south  and  throwing 
the  Gulf  Stream  far  out  into  the  ocean. 

Leaving  Beaufort,  we  took  a  little  steamer  from 
Newbern  through  Pamlico  and  Albemarle  sounds, 
then  into  the  Dismal  Swamp  Canal  and  so  on  to  and 
Norfolk  —  a  trip  of  much  interest  botanically  and 
otherwise.  The  banks  of  the  canal  were  lined  with 
the  showy  white-flowered  Stuartia,  an  American 
cousin  of  the  Chinese  Camellia.  Deeper  in,  one  sees 
multitudes  of  picturesque  cypress  trees,  which  form 
abrupt  angles  or  "knees"  at  the  water  level.  On 
these  projections  frogs  sit,  and  sometimes  long, 
slim,  striped  water-snakes  rest  there,  dropping  into 
the  water  when  disturbed,  and  making  on  the  sur- 
face as  they  recede  the  letter  "S"  in  endless  suc- 
cession. Here  also  lives  the  little  rice-field  fish  — 
Chologaster  —  of  antiquated  type,  a  supposed  an- 
cestor of  similar  fishes,  blind  and  colorless,  which 
frequent  the  cave  streams  of  Kentucky,  Indiana, 
and  Missouri. 

Midst  of  it  all  lies  Drummond,  "the  Lake  of  the 
Dismal  Swamp,"  a  round  sheet  of  water  about 
five  miles  across.  To  me  its  basin  has  an  appearance 
of  having  been  formed  by  fire  at  some  time  when 
the  swamp  was  dry,  so  that  a  big  hole  was  burned 
out;  but  I  may  be  wrong.  The  water,  although 
the  color  of  black  coffee  like  that  in  evergreen  bogs 

C  173  3 


The  Days  of  a  Man  £1878 

generally,  is  nevertheless  excellent  for  drinking 
purposes,  the  dark  stain  having  apparently  anti- 
septic values.  I  was  told  that  ships  from  Norfolk 
Navy  Yard  often  fill  their  tanks  with  Drummond 
water,  as  thoroughly  wholesome  and  the  best  avail- 
able. 

Brooks  At  Old  Point  Comfort  we  found  Dr.  Brooks  in 
charge  of  the  first  marine  research  station  under 
academic  auspices,  he  being  already  permanently 
located  in  the  new  Johns  Hopkins  University  at 
Baltimore. 


Proceeding  next  up  the  Potomac  to  Washington, 
Gilbert  and  I  spent  there  a  part  of  the  month  of 
September  before  our  return  to  Irvington.  I  was 
now  brought  into  close  and  permanent  relations 
with  Baird,  Gill,  Goode,  and  Coues.  Of  Goode  I 
have  already  written.  Baird,  then  assistant  secre- 
tary of  the  Smithsonian,  was  one  of  the  most  help- 
ful and  broad-minded  men  in  the  whole  history  of 
American  science.  We  used  to  call  him  "Grand- 
father of  us  all,"  for  in  his  day  there  was  no  strug- 
gling naturalist  to  whom  in  one  way  or  another  he  had 
not  given  assistance.  His  influence  on  American 
Systematic  Zoology  exerted  in  the  direction  of  frank 
exactness  was  predominant  and  lasting,  so  that 
writers  both  in  America  and  Europe  often  spoke 
of  the  "Baird  School  of  Naturalists."  For  ex- 
ample,  he  taught  us  to  say,  not  merely  that  "the 
birds  from  such  and  such  a  region  show  such  and 
such  peculiarities,"  but  that  "I  have  examined 
several  specimens  of  the  Horned  Lark,  which  in- 
dicate the  presence  of  such  and  such  peculiarities. 

C  '743 


1879]  'Theodore  Gill 

The  first  was  taken  by  John  Doe  at  Medicine  Bow, 
April  12,  1890,  and  is  numbered  25001  on  the  Na- 
tional Museum  records/5  Thus  he  would  always 
have  it  possible  for  others  to  distinguish  (by  refer- 
ence to  the  actual  material  on  which  one  based  an 
opinion)  between  what  one  really  knew  and  what 
one  only  surmised.  He  was  a  man  of  large  stature, 
heavily  built,  always  serene  and  especially  interested 
in  cooperation  as  distinguished  from  rivalry  in 
scientific  work. 

Dr.  Theodore  Gill  was  for  most  of  his  life  a  vol-  Theodore 
unteer  assistant  in  the  Smithsonian,  where  he  was  GlU 
assigned  special  rooms.  Giving  the  greater  part  of 
his  time  to  the  study  of  fishes,  or  rather  to  what 
others  had  written  of  fishes,  he  was  also  a  high 
authority  on  mollusks  and  mammals.  Specimens  he 
did  not  care  to  handle  except  in  the  form  of  dry 
and  clean  skeletons;  it  was  therefore  a  familiar 
joke  to  bring  him  a  fish  and  say  that  he  "  might  be 
interested  in  it  because  he  had  probably  never  seen 
one  before/'  But  he  had  an  unprecedented  mastery 
over  the  literature  of  science  and  a  keener  appre- 
ciation of  the  meaning  of  structure  in  classification 
and  in  evolution  than  that  shown  by  any  other 
naturalist.  Nearly  all  of  the  few  misconceptions  in 
his  work  come  from  trusting  to  other  writers  in  regard 
to  statements  inadequately  verified  by  them  and  not 
at  all  by  him. 

In  my  own  work  Dr.  Gill  was  helpful  and  eager 
to  give  all  possible  assistance  and  information. 
Many  other  young  naturalists  had  a  similar  ex- 
perience. But  with  Dr.  Giinther  of  London,  whose 
genius  ran  in  a  totally  different  channel,  he  was  in 
chronic  collision  about  matters  in  which  either  one 

n  175  a  . 


The  Days  of  a  Man  £1879 

may  have  been  technically  right  from  his  own 
point  of  view. 

In  his  early  twenties  Gill  went  on  an  expedition 
to  the  island  of  Trinidad,  his  only  field  work  of  any 
kind.  In  later  years  he  seldom  left  Washington, 
living  at  the  Cosmos  Club  but  spending  the  better 
part  of  every  day  about  the  Smithsonian.  Of 
peculiar  temperament,  he  failed  to  finish  any  single 
large  piece  of  work,  but  published  between  1858 
and  his  death  in  1914  some  three  hundred  minor 
papers  which  in  the  aggregate  have  given  his 
name  an  imperishable  place  in  the  history  of  Ich- 
thyology.  In  1905  I  dedicated  my  chief  general 

Taxonomy    work?  «A   Qu;de    to  ^  StU(Jy  Qf  Fishes,"  tO  "TheC- 

dore  Gill,  Ichthyologist,  Philosopher,  Critic,  Master 
in  Taxonomy. " 

Taxonomy,  I  may  explain,  is  technical  classification  of 
organisms  —  an  attempt  to  express  as  well  as  possible  by  dif- 
ferent categories  (order,  family,  genus,  species)  the  lines  of 
descent  and  ramification  through  which  animals  and  plants 
have  acquired  their  present  forms.  A  classification  truly 
natural  —  that  is,  based  on  structure,  embryological  develop- 
ment, geological  history,  and  genetic  descent  —  is  a  transcript 
of  our  actual  knowledge  of  the  evolution  of  the  forms  in  ques- 
tion. From  this  point  of  view,  Taxonomy  is  the  perfected 
product  of  all  Natural  History  research. 

Cows  Dr.    Elliott   Coues,    an   accurate   investigator   as 

well  as  a  brilliant  and  versatile  writer  with  a  special 
gift  for  bringing  his  work  into  popular  compre- 
hension, was  naturalist  of  the  Geological  Survey 
and  the  leading  American  ornithologist  after  Baird 
turned  away  from  birds  to  administrative  work. 
Coues'  bird  biographies  rank  with  the  best,  though 
perhaps  Irving's  sketch  of  the  Bobolink  and  Muir's 

C 


1879]  Elliott  Coues 


of  the  Water  Ouzel 1  remain  in  their  way  unap- 
proached.  He  had,  however,  various  eccentricities 
which  he  cultivated  as  a  means  to  secure  attention. 
On  the  walls  of  his  den  in  the  Survey  he  posted 
large  placards,  two  of  which  read  as  follows :  dr.e^  °f 

visitors 
I   DREAD    INTERRUPTION   MORE   THAN   THE    DEVIL. 

THE    VERY    FACT    OF   A   DOOR   HAS    IN    IT 
A   SUGGESTION  TO  THE   INQUIRING  MIND. 

In  our  mutual  relations  Coues  was  always  a 
valued  friend  and  adviser,  and  his  "Key  to  North 
American  Birds"  was  framed  on  admirable  lines, 
later  adopted  by  Jordan  and  Gilbert  in  a  similar 
work  on  fishes.2  Toward  the  end  of  his  life  he  sud- 
denly developed  an  incongruous  interest  in  theos- 
ophy,  afterward  abandoned  as  abruptly  as  it  had 
been  adopted.  Having  read  my  satirical  paper  on 
"The  Spontaneous  Activity  of  Shadows,"  3  a  bur- 
lesque of  the  theosophical  writings  of  D'Assier  and 
others,  he  one  day  referred  to  it  with  unqualified 
approval.  When  I  expressed  a  little  surprise,  he  de- 
fined his  own  position  laconically:  "Not  a  damned 
theos!" 

In  my  early  work  in  Ichthyology,  Gill  (who  was,  His  good 
as    I    have    said,   endlessly   kind)   often    suggested  admce 
that  we  publish  together  as  "Gill  and  Jordan,"  he 
doing  the  critical  part  and  I  largely  the  routine  of 
investigation  and  preparation  of  specimens.     Coues 
strongly  advised  against  that  arrangement,  citing 

1  "The  Humming-bird  of  the  California  Waterfalls." 

"A  Synopsis  of  the  Fishes  of  North  America,"  1882. 
8  See  Chapter  xxm,  page  600. 

n  1773 


The  Days  of  a  Man  £1879 

some  of  his  experiences  in  anatomical  work  on  birds 
in  joint  authorship  wicn  Gill,  \vhose  part  v*as  never 
ready.  Said  he:  "I  wouldn't  do  another  stroke  of 
work  with  Gill  to  save  his  immortal  soul!"  He 
furthermore  suggested  that  I  take  my  best  student 
as  associate.  On  this  excellent  advice  I  acted,  and 
f°r  a  &°°d  many  years  "Jordan  and  Gilbert "  worked 
together  on  about  two  hundred  different  papers.  Of 
our  collaboration  I  shall  frequently  speak  in  later 
pages. 


Ddi  Besides  Goode,  Gill,  and  Coues,  I  met  almost 
an?  daily  two  other  naturalists  of  the  Smithsonian  staff, 
Dr.  William  H.  Dall  and  Robert  Ridgway.  Dall, 
then  and  now  the  chief  authority  at  Washington 
on  mollusks,  and  a  man  of  agreeable  personality, 
had  lately  returned  from  explorations  in  Alaska. 
As  his  field  is  widely  separated  from  mine,  our  points 
of  contact  are  not  frequent.  But  our  friendly  ac- 
quaintance was  pleasantly  renewed  when  Eric  de- 
veloped a  great  interest  in  Conchology.  In  this 
matter  both  Dr.  Dall  and  his  associate,  Dr.  Paul 
Bartsch,  have  been  exceedingly  kind  and  helpful 
to  the  boy.  Ridgway,  a  young  bird  enthusiast, 
had  been  lately  brought  by  Baird  from  Illinois.  Of 
retiring  nature,  endless  patience,  and  deep  insight, 
he  has  devoted  a  whole  life  to  his  chosen  study, 
becoming  now  perhaps  the  first  ornithologist  of  his 
time. 

To  the  group  I  found  on  my  arrival  in  1877  was 
soon  added  Rathbun,  the  details  of  whose  career 
I  have  already  given.  Another  able  and  industrious 
investigator  with  whom  I  was  early  brought  into 
close  association  —  if  not  exactly  at  the  same  time 

C  178  3 


1879]      At  the  Smithsonian  Institution 

—  was  Dr.  Tarleton  H.  Bean,  who  had  come  from 
Pennsylvania  as  Goode's  colleague  in  research. 
Papers  by  Goode  and  Bean  ran  in  lines  parallel  with 
those  of  Jordan  and  Gilbert. 

A  leading  scientist  whose  acquaintance  also  I  Edward 
made  in  Washington  at  this  period  was  Professor  &inker 
Edward  D.  Cope  of  Philadelphia,  a  man  of  keen  °pe 
insight  and  great  versatility,  noted  alike  as  a  student 
of  fishes  and  an  untiring  collector  of  fossils.  But 
along  with  his  incisive  and  flashlight  mind  he  was 
frequently  hasty  as  to  details,  and  his  general 
conduct  was  governed  by  caprice  rather  than  by 
sustained  purpose.  Toward  me  he  was  always 
considerate  and  helpful.  When  Gilbert  and  I 
began  our  joint  work  in  the  Christmas  holidays  of 
1877-78,  he  invited  us  to  his  home  and  offered  every 
facility  in  the  way  of  books  and  advice,  except  that 
he  naturally  did  not  show  the  great  collection  of 
fish  skeletons  he  had  lately  purchased  from  Josef 
Hyrtl,  the  noted  anatomist  of  Vienna,  of  which  he 
subsequently  made  excellent  use.  For  on  it  he 
founded  his  classification  of  the  orders  of  fishes,  an 
arrangement  which  for  the  most  part  stands,  es- 
pecially as  supplemented  and  interpreted  by  Gill. 

Resuming  work  at  the  Smithsonian  the  following 
Christmas,  I  was  assigned  a  bedroom  high  up  in 
the  main  tower,  occupied  off  and  on  by  me  during 
two  or  three  succeeding  years.     I  had  then  been  Fishes 
employed  by  Dr.  John  S.  Newberry,  professor  in  °f°,hio 
Columbia  and   state  geologist  of  Ohio,  to  prepare 
an  elaborate  volume  on  the  fishes  of  Ohio,  expand- 
ing and  supplementing  the  Klippart  report  of  1877. 
As  artist  I  took  with  me  one  of  my  students,  Ernest 

C  1793 


The  Days  of  a  Man  £1879 

R.   Copeland,   Herbert's  younger  brother,   since   a 

surgeon  in  Milwaukee.     But  his  neat  and  accurate 

pencil  drawings  (those  of  two  species  of  Black  Bass 

excepted)  were  never  published,  probably  because  of 

the  invention  of  halftones  from  illustrations  in  ink. 

Joseph       An  interesting  feature  of  our  life  in  the  Institution 

Henry    at  this  period  was  an  occasional  meeting  with  the 

venerable   secretary,  Joseph  Henry,   the   physicist, 

one  of  the  noblest  figures  in  American  science. 


NOTE 

Portraits  of  Baird,  Goode,  Gill,  Cope,  and  others  of  my  early 
scientific  associates  (among  them  Giinther,  Poey,  Vaillant, 
Evermann,  and  Eigenmann)  will  be  found  in  "Guide  to  the 
Study  of  Fishes,"  Volume  I. 


1803 


BOOK    TWO 

1879-1891 


CHAPTER  EIGHT 


THE  academic  year  of  1878-79  proved  to  be  my  last 
at  Butler.  My  experiences  there  were  pleasant  on 
the  whole,  my  relations  with  my  colleagues  were 
always  agreeable,  and  small  though  the  institution 
was,  I  had  an  unusual  number  of  excellent  students, 
several  of  whom  had  followed  me  from  the  Indian- 
apolis High  School.  But  soon  the  institution  was 
torn  into  two  factions.  One  wished  to  make  the  s*onaf 
college  purely  a  feeder  to  the  Christian  Church, 
the  other  to  forward  its  growing  relations  with 
modern  scholarship  and  also  to  meet  the  local  de- 
mands of  the  city  of  Indianapolis. 

The  first  group  took  up  the  complaint  of  many 
of  the  rural  clergy,  who  felt  hurt  by  the  selection 
of  professors  not  of  their  faith,  —  whose  salaries, 
moreover,  were  generally  greater  than  their  own,  — 
although  both  the  founder,  Ovid  Butler,  who  con- 
trolled the  majority  of  the  corporation  stock,  and 
Dr.  A.  C.  Jameson,  the  broad-minded  president  of 
the  board  of  trustees,  were  strongly  opposed  to  the 
sectarian  movement.  Butler  and  Jameson  refused 
to  interfere,  however,  and  the  majority  of  the  trustees 
voted  to  vacate  the  three  chairs  held  by  individuals 
not  belonging  to  the  Christian  Church.  Unfortu- 
nately the  president,  Dr.  Otis  A.  Burgess,  a  man  of 
considerable  ability,  finally  joined  their  forces  —  to 
the  great  injur^  of  his  standing  in  the  city. 

The  trustees'  decision  created  a  storm,  for  the 
teachers  concerned  were  much  beloved,  especially  in 

C  183  3 


The  Days  of  a  Man  £1879 

Indianapolis,  where  Catherine  Merrill,  professor  of 

English,  had  been  for  years  an  inspiration  to  all, 

young  or  old,  who  were   interested  in  literature.1 

Scarcely  less  appreciated  was  my  friend,  Melville 

B.  Anderson,  who  had  held  the  chair  of  Modern 

Languages  and  who  now  went  to  Knox  College. 

The  third  of  these  beloved  heretics  was  Charles  E. 

A         Hollenbeck,    the    librarian.      And    as    Butler    was 

danger-   largely  dependent  upon  the  city  patronage,  the  at- 

™ove      tempt  to  revive  denominational  intolerance  greatly 

harmed  the  institution. 

During  the  weeks  of  dissension  before  my  de- 
parture, I  took  strong  ground  against  the  proposed 
changes,  severely  criticizing  the  president  for  yield- 
ing to  pressure  of  which,  in  my  judgment,  he  really 
disapproved.  Meanwhile,  at  Dr.  Jameson's  request, 
I  recommended  Rathbun  as  my  successor.  My 
allies  on  the  board  voted  for  him,  but  the  outside 
majority  elected  Dr.  Oliver  P.  Hay,  a  young  man 
who  had  written  articles  on  science  for  church 
papers,  and  who,  it  was  thought,  would  be  less  pro- 
nouncedly an  evolutionist  than  either  Rathbun  or 
myself.  Hay,  finding  material  for  the  study  of 
fishes  already  at  hand  in  the  collections  I  left  at  the 
college,  proceeded  to  extend  my  operations  in  the 
Alabama  Basin  by  a  survey  of  the  fauna  of  the 
state  of  Mississippi.  He  has  since  become  a  high 
authority  on  fossil  vertebrates,  and  his  views  on 
Darwinism  were  quite  as  radical  as  mine !  The  other 
vacancies  were  duly  filled  with  members  of  the 
Back  Church,  theologically  quite  safe.  Later,  under  the 
into  hue  presidency  of  £>r  gcot  Butler,  son  of  the  founder, 

1  Miss  Merrill  was  soon  afterward  reappointed,  holding  the  chair  of  Eng- 
lish until  her  voluntary  retirement  in  1883. 

C  1843 


Indiana  University 


the  name  of  the  institution  was  changed  to  Butler 
College,  and  with  wise  management  resumed  its 
former  progressive  attitude.  A  healthy  school  of 
higher  learning  will  exist  for  its  own  sake,  not  to 
promote  some  particular  religious  organization. 

On  leaving  Irvington  —  in  June,  1879  —  I  went  European 
almost   immediately  to   Europe   with   a   group   of  trips 
students.1    This  was  the  first  of  four  similar  trips, 
characterized  largely  by  modest  living  and  much 
tramping    through    picturesque    regions,    especially 
in  the  high  Alps.    Of  them  I  shall  deal  in  a  separate 
chapter.     With  added  years  and  new  reasons  for 
travel,  I  went  about  in  different  fashion,  as  will 
also  later  appear. 

2 

My  position  at  Butler  I  resigned  on  short  notice,  A  sudden 
having  been  unexpectedly  offered  the  professorship  of  transfer 
Natural  History  (which  then  meant  Zoology,  Geol- 
ogy, Botany,  and  Physiology)  in  Indiana  University. 
I  had  gone  down  to  Bloomington  to  serve  as  judge 
in  an  oratorical  contest,  a  kind  of  exercise  on  which 
great  stress  was  laid  in  those  days,  especially  in  the 
Middle  West,  where  successful  college  orators  passed 
into  the  state  legislature  and  ultimately  to  Con- 
gress.2 With  me  went  Brayton,  then  a  candidate 
for  the  already  announced  vacancy  in  Natural 

1  Among  other  members  of  these  student  parties  in  Europe,  I  should  men- 
tion Cornelia  M.  Clapp,  Henrietta  E.  Hooker,  Abby  L.  Sweetser,  teachers  in 
Mount  Holyoke  Seminary;  Ida  M.  Bunker,  Fannie  B.  Maxwell;  James  L. 
Mitchell  and  Samuel  E.  Smith,  students;  and  Julia  Hughes,  afterward  Mrs. 
Gilbert. 

2  Among  those  competing  on  the  occasion  to  which  I  refer  were  several 
typical  Western  orators,  two  of  whom  have  since  represented  Indiana  at  Wash- 
ington.   But  the  prize  went  to  Miss  Jennie  Campbell,  a  thoughtful  young 
woman,  afterward  wife  of  the  well-known  astronomer,  Dr.  Francis  P.  Leaven- 
worth  of  the  University  of  Minnesota. 

C 


The  Days  of  a  Man  £1879 

History.  Presumably,  however,  we  made  a  modest 
impression  upon  our  arrival  in  town,  for  the  official 
committee  who  came  to  meet  me  returned  to  the 
college  reporting  that  "the  Professor  was  not  on 
the  train.  No  one  got  off  but  two  drummers  who 
went  straight  to  the  hotel." 

The  board  of  trustees  being  then  in  session,  I 
went  before  them  by  request,  to  set  forth  in  all  good 
faith  my  friend's  qualifications  for  the  vacant  chair. 
To  my  surprise  I  was  later  informed  that  I  myself 
had  been  unanimously  elected  to  the  position.     In 
Judge  Rhodes  of  Indianapolis,  one  of  the  trustees, 
who  became  a  good  friend  and  remained  so  until  his 
Successor  death,  I  had  from  the  first  a  strong  backer.    I  thus 
*Richard    became    the    successor    of    the    veteran    geologist, 
Owen       Dr.  Richard  Owen;   and  Brayton,  I  may  add,  gen- 
erously  approved   my   decision   to   accept   the   ap- 
pointment. 

Indiana  Indiana  University  had  been  founded  in  1821  as 
Umver-  jnc[iana  Seminary.  In  1838,  however,  it  became 
Indiana  University,  definitely  recognized  by  the 
authorities  of  the  state  as  the  head  of  its  public 
school  system.  As  endowment  they  set  aside  the 
township  of  Perry,  Monroe  County,  and  then  sold 
it  practically  all  at  a  pitifully  low  price  (about  a 
dollar  an  acre)  to  settlers,  reserving  only  about  ten 
acres,  adjoining  the  village  of  Bloomington,  as  a 
campus. 

During  its  half-century  of  existence  between  1838 
and  1879  the  university  had  passed  through  many 
vicissitudes.  In  the  first  place,  Bloomington,  healthy 
though  it  is,  being  in  an  elevated  district  free  from 
malaria,  the  old  curse  of  Indiana  river  bottoms,  lies 

C  1863 


1879]     History  of  Indiana  University 

on  relatively  poor  land  just  south  of  the  line  ot 
glacial  drift  which  enriches  the  soil  of  the  northern 
three  fifths  of  the  state.  And  while  the  college  had 
from  the  beginning  some  eminent  teachers,  its  presi- 
dents, chosen  from  the  clergy  of  different  religious 
denominations,  were  as  a  rule  neither  scholarly  nor 
progressive.  One  of  them  (Dr.  Dailey)  is  said  to 
have  openly  proclaimed  that  "the  people  want  to 
be  humbugged;  it's  our  duty  to  give  them  what 
they  want."  Moreover,  notwithstanding  its  clerical  Humbug 
heads,  the  institution  was  wholly  secular,  a  fact 
exploited  to  give  color  to  the  old  damning  charge 
of  "godlessness."  Several  sectarian  colleges  in  the 
state  had  thus  more  than  once  combined  to  try  to 
shut  off  public  appropriations. 

In  spite  of  many  embarrassments,  however,  In- 
diana University  had  maintained  an  honorable 
record,  educating  many  teachers,  many  politicians, 
and  a  few  statesmen.  It  was  able  to  point  with 
pride  to  John  W.  Foster,  Secretary  of  State,  and  to 
Dr.  William  A.  Martin,  president  of  the  University 
of  Peking,  as  well  as  to  numerous  governors,  con- 
gressmen, clergymen,  and  honored  men  of  business. 
And  in  Indiana,  as  all  over  the  Middle  West,  the 
state  institution  ultimately  triumphed,  acquiring 
more  students,  more  resources,  and  more  influence 
than  all  the  denominational  colleges  put  together.. 

Yet  its  hold  on  the  people  was  for  a  long  time 
precarious,  so  that  students  of  collegiate  rank 
rarely  exceeded  150  in  number;  and  to  secure  even 
so  many  it  was  deemed  necessary  to  maintain  a 
special  preparatory  department.  Indeed,  in  those 
days,  the  mixing  of  youth  of  high  school  age  with 
their  university  elders  —  a  process  by  which  the 

C  187] 


The  Days  of  a  Man  £1879 

two  sets  were  subjected  to  the  same  discipline,  in 
general  adapted  to  the  necessities  of  neither  —  was 
one  of  the  burdens  carried  by  higher  education  al- 
most everywhere.  Another  and  still  heavier  load 
was  the  fixed  course  of  study,  based  originally  upon 
the  requirements  of  the  English  college,  diluted  but 
never  adapted  to  the  needs  of  pioneers. 
Grand  Nevertheless,  notwithstanding  the  handicaps  of 
°Men  of  Poverty>  antiquated  methods,  and  lack  of  popular 
Indiana  appreciation,  Indiana  University,  as  I  have  implied, 
did  some  really  excellent  work,  and  among  its  pro- 
fessors in  the  'yo's  were  four,  grown  old  in  service, 
who  were  justly  held  in  high  respect  by  all  capable 
of  recognizing  a  good  man.  These  were  Daniel  Kirk- 
wood,  Theophilus  A.  Wylie,  Elisha  Ballantine,  and 
Richard  Owen. 

Kirkwood  was  a  mathematical  astronomer  of 
learning  and  penetration,  a  man  of  noble  personal 
character  also,  as  simple-hearted  as  a  child,  and 
possessed  of  the  most  perfect  courtesy.  Dr.  Richard 
A.  Proctor,  a  distinguished  English  astronomer,  in 
a  public  address  at  Bloomington  spoke  of  Kirkwood 
as  "the  Kepler  of  America."  It  seemed  to  me  a 
pity  that  one  of  the  most  erudite  of  mathematical 
astronomers  in  our  country  should  spend  his  life 
teaching  elementary  geometry  and  algebra.  Sub- 
sequently, when  I  became  head  of  the  institution,  I 
arranged  that  Dr.  Kirkwood  should  have  a  compe- 
tent assistant  and  henceforth  teach  only  astronomy. 
Wylie,  son  of  Dr.  Andrew  Wylie,  the  first  president, 
and  for  nearly  fifty  years  professor  of  Physics,  was 
a  scholarly  gentleman  of  the  old  school,  though 
scarcely  in  line  with  the  progress  of  an  elusive 
science.  Ballantine,  the  learned  professor  of  Greek 

C  188  3 


1825]    The  Experiment  at  New  Harmony 

for  about  half  a  century,  was  a  sweet-spirited  and 
devoted  gentleman. 

Owen,  oldest  of  the  four,  was  a  son  of  the  noted 
Robert  Owen  from  Lanark,  Scotland,  who  founded 
with  William  Maclure  of  Philadelphia,  a  geologist 
of  notCj  the  communistic  experiment  at  New  Har- 
mony on  the  Wabash  River  below  Vincennes  —  an 
attempt  remarkable  for  its  success  in  bringing  to- 
gether forceful  and  original  minds,  as  well  as  for 
its  total  failure  to  solve  the  economic  problems  of  so- 
ciety. Richard  Owen,  like  his  distinguished  brother, 
David  Dale,  was  a  geologist  with  broad  scholarship 
and  large  sympathies,  and  a  man  of  courtly  man- 
ners. Once  I  gave  a  lecture  in  the  old  hall  at  New 
Harmony,  with  Dr.  Owen  in  the  chair.  He  was 
then  very  old  and  heard  not  a  word  I  said,  but  by 
watching  the  faces  of  the  audience  he  showed  every 
appropriate  shade  of  feeling  as  I  proceeded  with 
my  talk. 


The  importance  of  the  New  Harmony  enterprise 
in  the  intellectual  development  of  Indiana  seems  to 
me  sufficient  to  warrant  a  digression  at  this  point. 
A  century  and  more  ago,  the  feeling  was  general  Abolition 

that    the    age   of   competition   was   past    and   the  °/ .«" 
111  •  i       i  •    i        •  i  Mlon 

world  about  to  enter  on  a  new  social  and  industrial 

period.  Franklin  asserted  that  if  everybody  would 
work  three  hours  a  day  on  something  useful,  poverty 
would  be  banished  and  all  might  spend  the  after- 
noon of  each  day  and  the  whole  afternoon  of  life 
amid  the  consolations  of  philosophy,  the  charms  of 
literature,  or  the  delights  of  social  intercourse.  In 


The  Days  of  a  Man  £1825 

the  words  of  Robert  Dale  Owen,  Richard's  elder 
brother,  men 

looked  forward  to  the  time  when  riches,  because  of  their  super- 
fluity, would  cease  to  be  the  end  and  aim  of  man's  thoughts, 
plottings,  and  lifelong  strivings;  when  the  mere  possession  of 
wealth  would  no  longer  confer  distinction,  —  any  more  than 
does  the  possession  of  water,  —  than -which  there  is  no  property 
of  greater  worth. 

Maclure  refused  to  invest  money  in  Philadelphia 
because,  as  he  said, 

land  in  cities  can  no  longer  rise  in  value.  The  community 
system  must  prevail,  and  in  the  course  of  a  few  years  Phila- 
delphia must  be  deserted,  and  those  who  live  long  enough  may 
come  back  here  and  see  the  foxes  looking  out  of  the  windows. 

Robert  It  was  therefore  natural  that  Robert  Owen,1 
fresh  from  a  varied  career  of  reforms  in  Scotland, 
and  full  of  projects  for  the  development  of  the  New 
World,  found  in  Maclure  an  active  co-worker. 
Indeed,  most  of  the  learned  men  of  New  Harmony 
were  drawn  there  by  Maclure.  His  special  plan 
was  to  conduct  a  School  of  Industry  in  which  all 
should  be  taught  the  arts  of  "the  Conquest  of 
Nature."  Farmers,  for  instance,  should  not  be 
mere  tillers  of  the  soil,  but  should  be  trained  to  make 
the  earth  do  its  best.  And  at  New  Harmony  he 
published  a  magazine  called  The  Disseminator  of 
Useful  Knowledge,  Containing  Hints  to  the  Youth 
of  the  United  States  from  the  School  of  Industry. 
The  motto  of  this  comprehensive  sheet  rightly  pro- 
claimed that  "Ignorance  is  the  Frightful  Cause  of 
Human  Misery." 

1  "Robert  Owen,  the  shrewd,  gullible,  high-minded,  wrong-headed,  illustri- 
ous, preposterous  father  of  Socialism  and  Cooperation."     LYTTON  STRACHEY 

n  1903 


1825]        The  Boatload  of  Knowledge 

In  the  pages  of  The  Disseminator  appeared  the  Say 
name  of  Thomas  Say,  another  member  of  the  Com- 
munity, who  wrote  concerning  the  shells,  insects, 
and  birds  of  the  Wabash.  Say  had  already  won 
fame  as  an  explorer  on  Long's  expedition  to  the 
Rocky  Mountains,  and  was  among  those  who  came 
down  the  Ohio  River  from  Pittsburgh  in  the  famous 
"Boatload  of  Knowledge."  He  was  a  close  and 
conscientious  observer,  and  when  he  died  it  was 
asserted  that  "he  had  done  more  to  make  known 
the  Zoology  of  this  country  than  any  other  man." 
One  of  his  friends,  with  a  touch  of  Say's  own  modesty, 
said:  "He  will  ever  be  remembered  as  one  who  did 
honor  to  his  country  and  enlarged  the  boundaries 
of  human  knowledge." 

Another  of  our  most  attractive  pioneer  natural- 
ists,  the  French  artist,  Charles  A.  Le  Sueur,  also 
arrived  at  New  Harmony  with  the  "Boatload  of 
Knowledge."  A  friend  of  Cuvier,  with  an  established 
reputation  as  naturalist  and  artist,  he  had  been 
around  the  world  on  Peron's  celebrated  voyage. 
In  the  drawing  and  painting  of  animals  he  showed 
rare  skill,  and  his  woodcuts  of  the  fishes  of  the  Great 
Lakes  are  among  the  most  lifelike  ever  published. 
It  was  he  who  painted  the  drop  curtain  of  the  Com- 
munity Hall;  this  represented  Niagara  Falls  with 
"the  other  marvel  of  the  New  World,"  the  rattle- 
snake, coiled  beside  it!  Richard  Owen  was  a  favorite 
with  Le  Sueur,  and  once  told  me  how  he  used  to  wade 
barefooted  in  the  bayous  of  Posey  County  to  gather 
mussel  shells  for  the  gifted  naturalist. 

Robert  Dale  Owen  was  long  and  favorably  known  The 
as  a  charming  writer,  one  of  the  circle  of  essayists  °™en, 

i  i  lr"i         A  i         •      *  *        t  t       •         i  •    i      Brothers 

who  early  gave  to   The  Atlantic  Monthly   its  high 


The  Days  of  a  Man  1:1825 

literary  character.  As  a  member  of  the  Indiana 
legislature  he  led  in  shaping  the  public  school  sys- 
tem of  the  state.  David  Dale,  the  second  son,  and 
Richard,  the  youngest  of  this  remarkable  family, 
were  intimately  associated  throughout  their  lives. 
David,  afterward  United  States  Geologist,  was 
especially  interested  in  fossils  and  minerals.  He 
classified  the  great  collection  left  by  Maclure,  which, 
with  his  own  extensive  accumulations,  afterward 
formed  the  Owen  Museum  (of  85,003  specimens) 
of  the  University  of  Indiana,  one  of  the  largest 
fossil  displays  in  America  up  to  its  partial  destruc- 
tion by  fire  in  1883. 

The  New  Harmony  schoolmaster,  Dr.  Joseph 
Neef,  was  a  blunt,  plain-spoken,  honest  man,  a 
great  favorite  with  his  pupils.  An  Alsatian  by  birth, 
he  had  formerly  been  priest,  soldier,  and  at  the 
same  time  a  mathematician  of  high  ability  —  for 
a  while,  also,  associate  of  Pestalozzi  in  his  famous 
school  at  Yverdon,  Switzerland.  The  latter  once 
commended  him  as  an  earnest,  manly  worker  who 
"did  not  disdain  to  occupy  himself  with  the  elements 
of  science/'  Maclure  met  Neef  in  Paris  and  brought 
him  over  to  America.  "It  is  my  highest  ambition," 
said  Neef,  "to  be  a  country  school  teacher  amidst 
a  hardy,  vigorous  community."  His  two  daughters 
both  married  Owens,  the  one  David  Dale,  the  other, 
Richard. 

Troost  Many  distinguished  scientific  visitors  came  to 
New  Harmony,  among  them  the  Dutch  scientist, 
Dr.  Gerard  Troost,  who  remained  for  some  time, 
becoming  later  state  geologist  of  Tennessee;  and 
Sir  Charles  Lyell,  greatest  of  all  geologists,  was 
once  a  guest  of  the  Owens.  The  eccentric  Rafinesque 

C  192  3 


1825]  The  Economists 

also  passed  that  way  "on  foot,  with  a  bundle  of 
plants  under  which  a  peddler  might  groan." 

The  New  Harmony  movement,  based  on  demo- 
cratic principles,  soon  failed  —  some  said  because 
Owen  refused  to  deed  over  all  the  property;  but  the 
common  opinion  is  that  there  were  too  many  man- 
agers and  too  few  workers.  Community  of  own-  TOO 
ership  goes  only  with  community  of  spirit.  No  ™any 

fe  J  .      .  .  Mii  i  drones 

permanent  association  is  possible  where  drones 
and  workers  have  equal  access  to  the  honey  cells. 
Several  other  parallel  experiments  have  taught 
the  same  lesson  —  Brook  Farm  at  West  Roxbury, 
Bellamy  in  British  Columbia,  and  the  still  more  re- 
cent Kaweah  Community  on  the  flanks  of  the  Sierra 
in  California. 

The  New  Harmony  property  had  been  bought  by  Rapp 
Robert  Owen  from  Johann  Rapp,  head  of  a  celibate  aj^£e 
German  sect  called  "the  Economists,"  a  group  which  stone 
later  formed  a  large  settlement  in  central  Pennsyl- 
vania named  "Economy."  Each  of  Rapp's  ex- 
periments was  a  financial  success  because  a  single 
will  dominated.  They  were,  indeed,  theocracies,  with 
a  head  ruling  autocratically  by  supposedly  divine 
right.  According  to  Rapp,  an  angel  appeared  at  his 
bedside  every  morning  to  direct  what  each  member 
should  do  that  day.  The  University  of  Indiana 
still  preserves  the  New  Harmony  "Angel  Stone"  on 
which  the  celestial  emissary  is  said  to  have  stood. 
This  is  a  block  of  sandstone  marked  with  the  very 
plain  print  of  two  bare  feet,  woman's  size,  the 
great  toe  being  made  to  stand  out  to  prove  that 
it  had  never  been  cramped  by  a  shoe !  In  addition 
to  this  evidence  of  Rapp's  pious  ingenuity,  Owen 
found  under  the  fields  various  tunnels  from  which 

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the  prophet  used  suddenly  to  appear  and  "super- 
naturally"  incite  his  peasant  followers  to  renewed 
activity. 

The  few  living  members  of  the  sect  at  Economy 
have  now,  according  to  the  press,  inherited  all  the 
accumulations  in  Pennsylvania. 


New  The   town   of   Bloomington   had   been   originally 

neighbors  settled  mainly  from  the  South :  the  leading  citizens 
were  largely  of  Scotch  descent,  often  Presbyterian 
in  faith,  Republican  in  politics,  and  fairly  rigid  in 
all  their  beliefs.  As  Presbyterians  they  were  again 
divided  into  three  groups:  Cumberland  Presby- 
terians (of  which,  however,  there  were  very  few), 
who  would  not  vote  or  accept  citizenship  in  a 
country  where  God  was  not  recognized  in  the  Con- 
stitution; United  Presbyterians,  who  excluded  musi- 
cal instruments  from  the  church;  and  Presbyterians 
proper,  who  conformed  more  fully  to  current  custom. 
The  Among  the  more  interesting  citizens  was  one 

s"fool  unique  in  his  way,  Henry  S.  Bates,  the  shoemaker. 
of  Phi-  Soon  after  my  arrival  I  gave  a  lecture  on  Thoreau, 
at  tne  close  of  which  Bates  and  James  Karsell,  the 
grocer,  remained  to  talk  with  me.  Both,  I  found, 
were  well  informed  as  to  Thoreau's  life  and  writings. 
Bates,  seated  at  his  bench,  used  to  discuss  with 
students  and  professors  the  problems  of  literature 
and  life.  The  fact  that  though  without  much 
formal  education  he  did  a  good  deal  of  thinking  and 
was  withal  a  man  of  generous  sympathies  and 
friendly  interest,  brought  like-minded  men  to  sit 
at  his  feet.  So  the  shoe  shop  came  to  be  known  as 

C  194  3 


r 


1879]  In  Bloomington 

the  ''Bates  School  of  Philosophy,"  a  well-deserved 
name  which  persisted  for  years.  Most  of  the  younger 
professors  of  those  days  —  as  well  as  many  of  the 
earnest  students  —  became  informal  members  of 
the  cobbler's  class.  In  1893  Mr.  Bates  was  made 
university  registrar,  in  which  capacity  he  was 
especially  useful  as  adviser  to  young  people. 

Of  other  good  and  kindly  residents  I  may  instance 
notably  Dr.  James  D.  Maxwell  and  the  Reverend 
S.  R.  Lyons,  both  members  of  the  board  of  trustees; 
William  P.  Rogers,  attorney,  afterward  professor  of 
Law  and,  still  later,  dean  of  the  Cincinnati  Law 
School;  and  Walter  E.  Woodburn,  banker. 

When  we  arrived  in  Bloomington,  only  one  street  rhe 
was  covered  with  gravel,  the  others,  almost  im-  town 
passable  after  rain,  being  composed  of  bright  red 
clay  and  crossed  by  pedestrians  on  stepping  stones 
made  of  rough  cubes  of  limestone,  flat  slabs  of  which 
also  served  as  sidewalks.  Our  house  was  a  modest 
frame  affair  on  Morton  Street,  at  the  north  end  of 
town.  Within  a  few  rods  of  it  now  stands  a  monu- 
ment marking  the  actual  center  of  population  of 
the  United  States  as  determined  in  1917.  With 
each  succeeding  census  new  pillars  will,  of  course,  be 
required  to  indicate  the  gradual  westward  trend. 
During  my  seventeen  years'  residence  in  the  state 
the  point  moved  from  near  Cincinnati  to  Greens- 
burg,  Indiana.  It  is  now  (1920)  at  Whitehall  in 
Owen  County. 

The  central  square  of  town  was  marked  by  the 
courthouse,  then  a  shabby  building  surrounded  on 
Saturdays  by  the  saddle  horses  and  teams  of  the 
neighboring  farmers  —  all  Monroe  County,  after 

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the  fashion  of  the  rural  South,  aiming  to  spend 
Saturday  afternoon  at  the  county  seat.  Thus  in 
summer  the  entire  space  about  the  courthouse  fence 
would  be  bordered  with  rinds  of  the  watermelon,  a 
luscious  fruit  much  enjoyed  by  the  whites  and  still 
more  by  the  colored  population. 

Athwart  the  main  street  runs  a  brook  now  en- 
tirely covered,  but  spanned  in  very  early  days  by 
a  single  log  necessarily  crossed  by  every  one  bound 
Only      for   the   college.     That   primitive   bridge   was   ac- 
™        cordingly  once   the   scene  of  an  incident  long  re- 
time       membered  in  local  history,  harking  back  to  very 
early  days.     President  Wylie,  it  seems,  was  much 
disliked  by  his  faculty  of  two,  Baynard  R.  Hall  of 
the    chair   of  Classics,    and    Harney,    professor   of 
Mathematics;    for  a  while,  at  least,  the  president 
and    Harney   were   not   on   speaking   terms.     One 
Sunday  morning  the  two  met  on  the  log.    According 
to  local  etiquette  Harney  had  the  right  of  way,  but 
Wylie  elbowed  him  into  the  stream. 

A  racy  account  of  this  occurrence  may  be  found  in 
a  book  by  Hall,  who  after  about  seven  years  of 
service  returned  to  the  East  and  there  published 
(1843)  a  volume  entitled  "Life  in  the  New  Purchase" 
—  New  Purchase  being  the  name  by  which  Monroe 
County,  then  lately  bought  from  the  Indians,  was 
An  un-  commonly  known.  In  it  the  author  gives  a  vivid 
book1"'  account  °f  his  Bloomington  experiences,  not  on 
the  whole  thought  flattering  by  the  townspeople, 
for  they  destroyed  every  copy  in  the  university 
library  and  everywhere  else  within  reach.  Yet  the 
writer  speaks  appreciatively  of  the  energy  and  in- 
dependence of  certain  individuals,  particularly  of 
one  most  honest  and  capable  "Dr.  Sylvan/'  a  mem- 

C  196  3 


1843]         Life  in  the  New  Purchase 

her  of  the  board  of  trustees,  identified  as  Dr.  David 
H.  Maxwell,  father  of  Dr.  James  D.  Maxwell. 

Commenting  on  the  Doctor's  rough  and  careless 
dress,  Hall  calls  it 

a  leaden  casket  with  a  rare  jewel  within.  With  a  little  fixing 
this  gentleman  would  easily  have  adorned  and  delighted  the 
best  company  in  the  best  places.  He  was  a  brave  soldier,  an 
able  statesman,  and  a  skillful  physician;  and  if  not  learned, 
he  was  extensively  and  profoundly  read  in  his  favorite  studies, 
medicine  and  politics.  His  person,  even  disfigured  by  his 
dress,  was  uncommonly  fine,  his  countenance  prepossessing, 
and  his  conversation  easy,  pleasant,  and  instructive.  ...  He 
would  have  graced  the  halls  at  Washington. 

The  professor  also  writes  fairly  of  the  students  of  Early 
those  days:  day,  , 

J  students 

The  speeches  were  equal  to  the  best  in  our  schools.  Gener- 
ally the  young  men  are  superior  to  the  young  gentlemen  of 
old  settlements  in  both  scholarship  and  elocution. 

For  this  he  gives  several  reasons,  which  I  here 
condense : 

1.  They  come  to  learning  as  a  novelty.     Nothing  exceeds 
their  interest  and  curiosity.     It  is  long  before  the  novelty 
ceases,  and  then  the  habit  of  hard  studying  takes  its  place. 

2.  They  regard  learning  as  the  lever  to  elevate  them,  to 
help  the  New  World  to  cope  with  the  Old. 

3.  They  have  more  energy  than  the  young  gentlemen. 

4.  They  have  few  temptations  to  idleness  and  dissipation. 

5.  The  tuition  fee  of  ten  dollars  —  the  value  of  ten  acres  of 
land  —  is  too  hard  to  obtain  to  be  squandered  lightly. 

6.  They  are  inquisitive  like  Yankees,  and  gain  knowledge 
by  torturing  professors. 

7.  They  come  into  more  immediate  contact  with  professors 
than  do  Eastern  students. 

"Seven  more  reasons,"  no  doubt  good,  he  refrains 
from  giving  in  detail,  but  the  chief  one  is  that  they 

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will  work  at  anything  to  pay  their  way.     He  also 
cites  admiringly  the  case  of  a  lad  who  rewrote  an 
essay  thirty-six  times  before  presenting  it.1 
tfne         Somewhat  later  appeared  a  well-known  book  of 
Hoosier  similar  character,  ''The  Hoosier  Schoolmaster/'  by 
ma°t°r"  Edward  Eggleston.    This  described  life  in   Switzer- 
land County  on  the  Ohio  River  below  Cincinnati, 
near  the  Swiss  colony  of  Vevay.    Eggleston  frankly 
gave  (as  Hall  did  not  in  any  case)  the  real  names 
of  the  people  he  described.     James  H.  Means,  son 
of  Bud  Means,  one  of  his  leading  characters,  is  a 
well-known  mining  engineer  in  London,  a  graduate 
both  of  Indiana  and  of  Stanford. 

But  I  must  not  leave  my  readers  with  the  impres- 
sion that  Bloomington  is  still  a  pioneer  village.  It 
has  now  become  a  well-kept  city  with  asphalt  streets, 
a  new  stone  courthouse,  and  a  general  air  of  pros- 
perity. 


About  Bloomington  are  many  places  and  objects 
of  interest  connected  with  the  geological  forma- 
tion. There  the  surface  rocks  are  mainly  of  the 
Burlington  Subcarboniferous,  represented  by  thick- 
bedded,  white  oolitic  limestone,  which  through  its 
value  for  building  purposes  has  enriched  the  town. 
Underlying  that  formation  are  the  Keokuk  shales, 
remarkable  for  their  wealth  of  geodes,  concretions  of 
quartz  usually  about  six  inches  through  but  vary- 
ing in  size  from  that  of  a  cherry  to  that  of  a  big 
pumpkin;  these  are  found  in  all  the  local  streams 
which  have  cut  down  through  the  limestone.  A 

1  I  am  informed  that  Professor  Hall's  book  is  about  to  be  reprinted  by 
an  Eastern  house,  as  a  contribution  to  our  knowledge  of  American  pioneer  life. 

C  198  H 


1879]          Monroe  County  Geology 

geode  occupies  the  space  left  vacant  by  the  dis- 
solution of  some  organic  object  —  a  sponge  perhaps, 
or  a  shell,  or  the  head  of  a  crinoid.  If  a  shell  or 
crinoid,  the  original  shape  is  maintained;  but  most 
geodes,  probably  having  replaced  sponges,  are  with- 
out definite  form.  Broken  open,  they  are  found  to 
be  hollow.  Those  that  have  a  minute  hole  through 
the  rough  crust  are  lined  inside  with  chalcedony, 
—  that  is,  clouded  quartz  arranged  in  layers,  —  a 
peculiar  structure  caused  by  relatively  rapid  evapo- 
ration. But  when  the  crust  is  solid,  the  siliceous 
liquid  has  evaporated  very  slowly,  leaving  the  in- 
side filled  with  more  or  less  perfect  crystals,  usually 
of  white  quartz,  sometimes  of  amethyst  —  which 
is  violet  quartz  —  sometimes  mixed  with  crystals 
of  zinc  blende,  often  of  calcspar,  and  occasionally  of 
other  minerals.  Very  rarely,  a  geode  still  retains 
some  of  the  siliceous  water  from  the  evaporation  of 
which  it  has  been  formed. 

The  center  of  geode  deposit  is  along  the  Mississippi 
River  about  Keokuk,  Iowa.  At  Niota,  Illinois, 
across  from  Keokuk,  I  once  found  specimens  filled 
with  bitumen,  but  otherwise  perfect. 

Monroe  County  is  rich  in  fossils,  also,  and  has 
occasional  caves  worn  by  water  in  the  limestone. 
It  possesses  one  special  botanical  charm,  Arbutus  Trailing 
Hill,  a  barren,  wooded  slope  covered  in  spring  with  Arbutus 
flowers  of  the  fragrant  Trailing  Arbutus  —  Epig&a 
repens  —  and,  as  far  as  I  know,  the  westernmost 
point  of  its  distribution.  This  was  the  choicest  dis- 
covery of  our  colleague,  Herman  B.  Boisen,  pro- 
fessor of  German,  my  own  closest  associate  in  the 
old  university  faculty.  Boisen  was  a  warm-hearted, 
generous,  enthusiastic  Germanized  Dane  from  Hol- 

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stein.  Although  occasionally  erratic,  and  always 
resistant  to  red  tape,  he  was  one  of  the  real  men  of 
the  faculty,  remarkably  successful  as  a  teacher  and 
sincerely  loved  by  his  students.  After  some  ob- 
scure difficulty  with  the  president,  he  resigned  in  the 
early  '8o's,  going  to  the  Lawrenceville  School,  New 
Jersey,  where  he  soon  after  died. 

Brown  Brown  County,  our  neighbor  on  the  east,  merits 
County  a  worci.  The  most  hilly  and  backward  part  of  the 
state,  without  a  railroad  in  my  time,  its  highest 
elevation,  Weedy  Patch,  approaches  the  dignity  of 
a  mountain.  To  this  and  to  the  sister  summit,  Bear 
Wallow,  my  students  and  I  made  frequent  pil- 
grimages. Near  the  barren  top  of  Weedy  Patch 
stood  a  poverty-stricken  cabin,  the  owner  of  which 
explained  that  somebody  had  to  live  there  and  so 
he  did! 


C  2003 


CHAPTER  NINE 


RETURNING  in  September  from  a  trip  to  Europe,  I 
took  up  my  new  work  in  the  University  with  much 
enthusiasm.  Naturally  I  found  there  more  and 
better  equipment  and  a  more  generous  atmosphere 
than  at  Butler,  although  the  larger  institution  was 
quite  as  heavily  burdened  by  educational  tradition. 
In  addition  to  several  excellent  students  who  had 
followed  me  from  Irvington,  a  number  of  others 
showed  marked  promise.  I  had  hardly  made  a 
beginning,  however,  when  a  most  unforeseen  call  to 
government  service  gave  me  a  rare  opportunity  for 
field  work  in  Zoology. 

The  United  States  Census  Bureau,  under  the  ef-  Govern- 
ficient  administration  of  General  Francis  A.  Walker,  ment. 
had  planned  for  1880  a  report  which  in  fullness  and 
accuracy  should  far  surpass  any  work  of  the  kind  Coast 
before  attempted.  Through  cooperation  with  Baird 
and  Goode,  the  investigation  of  marine  industries 
was  turned  over  to  the  Fish  Commission,  and  I 
was  asked  to  take  charge  of  the  work  on  the  Pacific 
Coast,  while  Dr.  Bean  went  to  Alaska  on  a  simi- 
lar mission,  and  Silas  Stearns,  a  delightful  young 
student  of  nature,  canvassed  the  Gulf  of  Mexico. 
Making  an  adjustment  whereby  my  collegiate  work 
was  placed  temporarily  in  Dudley's  hands,  I  was 
enabled  to  accept  the  alluring  assignment,  upon 
which  I  entered  in  December,  1879.  Gilbert,  then 
one  of  my  graduate  students,  accompanied  me  as 

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secretary  and  assistant,  in  both  of  which  capacities 
he  proved  most  efficient. 

Details  Our  special  duty  was  to  visit  or  communicate 
of  in-  with  every  post  office  within  five  miles  of  the  coast 
in  California,  Oregon,  and  Washington,  to  list  the 
various  species  of  fishes  and  other  marine  animals 
inhabiting  adjacent  waters,  and  to  report  fully  on 
their  habits,  food,  and  value;  also  to  describe  in 
detail  the  past,  present,  and  probable  future  of  all 
industries  related  to  the  sea.  This  investigation,  in- 
volving nearly  a  year  of  travel  and  research,  was 
one  of  the  most  important  events  in  my  scientific 
career. 

Toward  the  end  of  December  we  left  Chicago 
for  California,  settling  down  in  the  train  for  the 
seven  days  it  then  took  to  reach  San  Francisco. 
Through  Wyoming  we  saw  great  herds  of  antelope; 
at  Ogden  we  had  a  chance  to  climb  a  snowy  peak 
of  the  Wasatch  range,  which  overtops  the  town  and 
gives  a  fine  view  of  the  valley  and  the  Great  Salt 
Lake,  then  covered  with  ice. 

LOS  Arrived  at  San  Francisco,  we  decided  to  begin 

Angeles  with  the  southern  end  of  the  state,  and  accordingly 
went  at  once  by  rail  to  Los  Angeles,  whence  we 
planned  to  travel  by  steamer  to  San  Diego.  In  Los 
Angeles  I  was  much  impressed  by  seeing  the  boys 
playing  ball  with  oranges  at  Christmas.  But  it  was 
still  a  mere  village,  —  mostly  Mexican,  its  only 
hotel  being  the  Pico  House,  a  tienda  on  the  old 
Plaza,  —  and  the  country  round  about  was  practi- 
cally a  desert  of  cactus  and  sagebrush.  The  steamer 
for  San  Diego  started,  then  as  at  present,  from  the 
port  of  San  Pedro.  Having  reached  the  little  town 
a  few  hours  ahead  of  time,  we  climbed  the  inviting 
C  202  3 


i88o]  Southern  California 


Palos  Verdes,  the  hill  of  "green  trees,"  above  the 

Verdes 


two  villages  of  San   Pedro  and  Wilmington,  both  Palos 


now  incorporated  in  the  city  of  Los  Angeles.  But 
as  frequently  happens  in  the  clear  air  of  the  West, 
Palos  Verdes  proved  to  be  higher  than  it  looked, 
commanding  a  most  beautiful  prospect.  So  we 
missed  the  boat  and  had  to  go  by  night  and  day 
stage  from  Santa  Ana  to  San  Diego,  a  distance  of 
eighty  miles. 

Toward  midnight  we  changed  horses  at  pic- 
turesque San  Juan  Capistrano,  the  first  Mission  I 
ever  saw  and  the  one  which  six  years  later  furnished 
the  architectural  motive  of  Stanford  University. 
Directly  in  front  stands  an  old  pepper  tree,  dating, 
at  least  according  to  our  veracious  stage  driver, 
from  the  year  One.  For  breakfast  we  stopped  by 
the  side  of  the  Mission  San  Luis  Rey,  perhaps  the 
most  beautiful  of  the  whole  series,  then  neglected 
but  since  partly  restored,  though  not  wholly  to  its 
advantage.  San  Diego  was  reached  the  following  San  Diego 
afternoon.  There  in  the  local  "Chinatown,"  to 
which  we  at  once  made  our  way,  I  picked  up  a  small 
specimen  of  a  true  Sole  —  Symphurus  atricauda  — 
the  first  of  its  type  to  be  recorded  from  the  American 
side  of  the  Pacific.  That  discovery  we  regarded  as 
a  good  omen,  as  it  showed  the  field  to  be  by  no  means 
exhausted. 

San  Diego  was  then  a  small,  remote  city  which  on 
the  strength  of  its  climate  (the  most  equable  in  the 
United  States)  had  been  overtaken  by  an  unfortu- 
nate boom.  This  had  dotted  the  neighboring  hills 
with  city  lots  and  left  the  town  financially  stranded. 

Our  office  stood  at  the  foot  of  the  wharf,  in  an 
empty  saloon  with  the  significant  legends  "Last 

C  203  ] 


The  Days  of  a  Man 


The  Chance"  on  the  side  toward  town,  and  "First 
'chance"  Chance"  next  the  wharf.  One  day  we  had  a  call 
from  a  man  who  remarked  that  he  starved  out  in 
that  place,  and  had  dropped  in  to  see  how  business 
was  going  with  us!  Next  arrived  a  fat  squaw  call- 
ing herself  Ramona  and  insisting  "Me  want  whisky." 
It  took  some  minutes  to  persuade  her  that  the 
"Last  Chance"  had  gone  dry.  Finally,  however, 
we  succeeded  in  leading  her  out  of  the  shop,  her 
little  son  pushing  vigorously  from  behind. 

At  that  time,  throughout  California,  there  was  a 
good  deal  of  complaint  about  "Chinese  cheap 
labor."  In  San  Diego,  at  least,  this  was  mainly 
talk,  the  people  meanwhile  allowing  the  Chinese 
fishermen  to  depopulate  the  bay  by  the  use  of  fine, 
small  nets  trapping  everything,  little  and  big  — 
all  of  which  they  dried,  salted,  and  sent  to  China. 
That  disastrous  practice  I  attempted  to  stop  "in 
the  name  of  the  law."  The  men  accordingly  came 
"Mr.  to  know  me  as  "Law"  or  "Mr.  Law,"  and  they 
Law"  seemed  to  think  that  the  fishery  statutes,  not  ex- 
ecuted until  after  my  arrival,  were  of  my  own 
making.  On  our  return  later  in  the  year  they 
stopped  work  entirely,  evidently  fearing  to  take 
any  chances  with  "Law."  To  secure  specimens, 
therefore,  I  had  to  hire  men  to  fish  for  me. 

In  the  town  we  found  a  thriving  Natural  History 
Society,  of  which  Daniel  Cleveland  was  the  lead- 
ing spirit.  One  of  its  most  active  members  was 
Rosa  Smith,  who  later  married  Eigenmann,  my 
assistant  and  successor  in  Zoology  at  Indiana  Uni- 
versity. Miss  Smith  accompanied  us  on  various 
scientific  excursions,  going,  in  fact,  as  far  as  Port- 
land. She  discovered  and  described  a  few  species 
C  204  ] 


i88cd      Fishes  of  Southern  California 

from  San  Diego;  afterward  she  associated  herself 
with  her  husband's  work  on  the  fishes  of  that  region 
and,  later,  on  those  of  Brazil. 

From  San  Diego  we  moved  up  to  Wilmington, 
which  adjoins  San  Pedro,  and  there  daily  overhauled 
the  boats  of  the  Portuguese  fishermen  who  work 
between  the  latter  town  and  Santa  Catalina  Island. 
Wilmington  proved  an  excellent  place  for  our  pur- 
poses, though  it  was  then  a  bit  crude  socially,, 


Santa  Catalina  itself,  with  its  settlement  of  Avalon,  soon  Big  game 
afterward  became  the  most  noted  center  of  big-game  fishing 
in  the  world.  About  it  swarm  the  great  Leaping  Tuna  or 
Tunny  —  Thunnus  thynnus  —  which  reaches  a  weight  of  six  Catalina 
hundred  pounds  or  more,  and  takes  the  hook  mightily;  the 
Albacore  —  Germo  alalonga  —  of  about  twenty  pounds  and 
with  long,  ribbon-like  pectoral  fins;  the  Sword  fish  —  Xipbias 
gladius  —  identical  with  the  giant  Swordfish  of  the  Atlantic; 
the  Marlinspike-fish  —  Tetrapturus  mitsukurii  —  a  smaller  edi- 
tion of  the  Swordfish,  but  still  mighty;  the  Yellow-fin  Tuna 
—  Germo  macropterus  —  a  common  fish  of  Japan;  the  huge 
Bass  or  "Jewfish"  —  Stereolepis  gigas;  and  the  swift  Yellow- 
tail  or  Amber-fish  —  Seriola  dorsalis.  The  famous  Tuna  is 
coarse  and  oily,  but  the  Swordfish  is  highly  valued  as  food. 
The  Yellowtail  is  also  excellent,  and  the  Albacore  has  delicate 
white  flesh  of  a  rich  flavor,  so  that  lately  it  has  been  extensively 
canned  (tinned)  under  the  name  of  Tuna,  unfortunate  be- 
cause incorrect. 

The  Barracuda  —  Spbyrcena  argenUa — a  game  fish  of  smaller 
size  but  toothsome  flavor,  should  also  be  counted  among  the 
treasures  of  Avalon.  

On  the  whitewashed  walls  of  our  little  laboratory 
in  Wilmington,  Gilbert  and  I  by  turns  contributed 
to  a  string  of  incongruous  verses,  written  in  moments 
of  desperation,  during  the  prevalence  of  the  rainy 
season,  and  here  reproduced  for  old  times'  sake. 

1:2053 


The  Days  of  a  Man  Ci88o 

THE  RHYME  OF  THE  PALOS  VERDES 

When  the  U.  S.  Fish  Commission 
Feels  too  lazy  to  go  fishing, 
And  the  star-eyed  Senoritas  in 

siesta  slumber  soft, 
Let  us  leave  Saint  Peter's  valley, 
With  its  "benzine"  and  alkali, 
And  its  dirty  "customhouses,"  for  the 

mountain  side  aloft. 

Let  us  to  the  Palos  Verdes 
Where  the  vaquero  doth  herd  his 
By  the  cactus-sorely-prickled 

on  the  sagebrush-feeding  flocks, 
To  the  greenest  of  green  mountains, 
Which  without  nor  brooks  nor  fountains 
Keeps  its  slopes  as  sleek,  as  glossy 

as  a  mermaid's  curling  locks. 

Past  the  burrows  which  the  rabbit 

Digs  as  if  by  force  of  habit 

'Neath  the  tangled  roots  of  cactus,  where 

a  plow  can  never  reach; 
And  the  little  owls  (the  "Greasers" 
Call  these  solemn  birds  "Professors") 
On  the  rabbit  burrows  dreaming, 

vanish  with  a  sudden  screech. 

Though  the  air  appears  so  quiet 

The  mirage  doth  wildly  riot 

On  the  highlands  and  the  islands, 

building  pinnacles  like  mad. 
Far  beyond,  across  the  islands, 
Lie  the  snowy  heights  where  Silence, 
All  unmoved  by  human  uproars, 

holds  his  court  on  Soledad. 

Down  the  slope  we  climb,  where  cactus 
With  its  vicious  thorns  hath  scratched  us, 
And  the  rolling  gourd  doth  flourish 
till  against  a  stone  it  knocks. 


i88o]         Diversions  of  Naturalists 

From  the  last  bluff,  steep  and  stony, 
To  the  beach  where  Abalone, 
With  his  slimy  fingers  delving,  crawls 
beneath  the  shelving  rocks. 

There  the  mad  Pacific  plunges 
On  the  gentle-tempered  sponges, 
And  the  Octopus  doth  lunge  his 

venom  at  each  passing  shark. 
There  the  very  long-nosed  Garfish, 
And  the  very  short-nosed  "Star"  fish, 
And  full  many  another  "  quar"  fish 

getting  in  his  little  work. 

In  the  kelp  the  junks,  strange  vessels, 
In  whose  sails  and  rigging  nestles, 
Drying  for  the  China  market, 

Eel,  and  Rockfish  red  as  blood, 
While  the  whistle  of  the  steamer 
Wakens  every  startled  dreamer, 
As  it  plows  through  muddy  water,  stops 

at  last  in  watery  mud. 

Riding  on  his  vicious  "bronco," 
Coming  in  from  the  Barranca, 
With  his  red  scrape  glowing  through 

the  Eucalyptus  trees, 
Comes  the  swarthy  Mexicano, 
Frowning  like  a  Castillano, 
With  his  long  mustachio  waving  like 

a  pennon  in  the  breeze. 

Soon  the  morning  call  to  business 
Breaks  our  fine  poetic  dizziness, 
And  the  sun  once  more  is  creeping 

o'er  the  Sepulveda  hills. 
And,  dear  friends,  we  promise  never, 
Never,  that  is,  hardly  ever, 
To  repeat  this  gross  addition  to  your 

necessary  ills. 

C  207 


The  Days  of  a  Man  D88o 


Santa  In   February  we  proceeded  northward  to  Santa 

Barbara  Barbara,  charmingly  situated  and  with  a  sugges- 
tion of  the  French  Riviera.  As  a  collecting  ground 
it  proved  one  of  the  best,  the  channel  and  the  off- 
shore islands  being  rich  in  fish  life.  One  day  we 
climbed  the  Sierra  Santa  Ynez,  which  rises  behind 
the  town  and  gives  a  superb  view.  This  was  one 
of  the  roughest  ascents  I  ever  made,  because  of  the 
ragged  shrubbery  which  envelops  its  slopes.  That 
evening  on  our  return,  hot  and  dusty,  we  were  de- 
lighted to  find  that  the  men  employed  by  us,  John 
Weinmiller  from  Maine  and  Andrea  Larco,  a  Geno- 
vese,  had  brought  in  a  new  species,  the  most  bril- 
liant fish  on  the  coast,  light  pink  in  color,  crossed 
by  broad  bands  of  deep  crimson,  and  known  as 
the  "Spanish  Flag."  This,  our  choicest  discovery, 
we  named  Sebastichthys  rubrivinctus. 

An  albacore  yielded  another  interesting  find,  for 
it  had  swallowed  a  full-grown  hake  —  Merluccius  — 
in  the  stomach  of  which  lay  a  little  deep-sea  fish  — 
Sudis  Sudis  ringens  —  never  seen  before  or  since,  though 
afterward  we  opened  many  an  albacore  and  many 
a  hake.  One  more  rarity,  and  one  only,  rewarded 
us  in  the  process  —  a  tiny  lantern  fish  with  luminous 
spots,  which  had  risen  from  the  deeps  in  a  storm 
(nothing  else  ever  brings  it  from  below)  and  which 
we  named  Myctophum  crenulare. 

In  the  channel  the  California  Flying  Fish  —  Cyp- 
selurus  calif ornicus  —  runs  in  multitudes  in  early 
spring,  so  that  we  had  an  opportunity,  unique  up 
to  that  time,  to  learn  exactly  how  it  flies.  From  a 
C  208  ] 


18803  At  Santa  Barbara 

boat  one  could  see  every  movement.  Since  then  I  Flying 
have  watched  the  flight  of  numerous  species  of  ^sbfs 
Cypselurus,  large  and  small,  in  both  the  Atlantic 
and  the  Pacific,  and  my  later  observations  con- 
firm our  first  conclusions,  although  none  of  the  others 
have  the  force  or  spread  of  "wing"  of  californicus, 
the  largest  known.  This  flies  for  distances  varying 
from  a  few  rods  to  upward  of  an  eighth  of  a  mile, 
rarely  rising  more  than  from  four  to  six  feet.  All  Method 
movements  below  the  surface  are  extremely  rapid,  °L  H 
but  the  sole  source  of  motive  power  in  water  or 
out  is  the  impulse  given  by  the  powerful  tail,  which 
vibrates  rapidly  and  strongly  until  the  whole  body 
has  emerged.  While  this  motion  continues,  however, 
the  pectorals  or  wings  seem  to  be  also  in  a  state  of 
rapid  vibration,  —  a  fallacious  appearance,  as  they 
are  simply  shaken  by  the  general  agitation,  the  ani- 
mal having  ability  only  to  spread  and  fold  them. 
The  ventrals  remain  folded  until  the  tail  leaves  the 
water  and  becomes  quiet,  at  which  time  both  pec- 
torals and  ventrals  are  spread,  then  held  at  rest. 
They  thus  serve,  not  as  actual  wings,  but  rather  as 
parachutes  to  hold  up  the  body.  When  the  fish 
drops  and  touches  the  surface,  tail  vibration  again 
begins  —  with  it,  also,  the  apparent  movement  of 
the  pectorals.  Flight  is  now  resumed,  to  be  finished 
finally  for  the  moment  in  a  big  splash. 

In  the  air  Flying  Fishes  look  like  large  dragon 
flies.  Their  progress  is  very  swift,  at  first  in  a 
straight  line  but  later  deflected  into  a  curve,  and 
always  without  relation  to  the  direction  of  the  wind. 
When  a  vessel  passes  through  a  school,  they  spring 
up  before  it,  moving  away  in  all  directions  like 
grasshoppers  in  a  meadow.  Off  Walpole  Island  in 

C  209  3 


The  Days  of  a  Man 


the  South  Pacific,  I  once  caught  "on  the  fly"  a  large 
individual  which  proved  to  be  new  to  science.  In 
the  Tropics  live  some  species  not  exceeding  three 
or  four  inches  in  length,  with  very  short  pectorals 
and  little  ventrals;  these  fly  a  few  yards  only. 
opening  At  Santa  Barbara  we  received  word  from  Pro- 

fessor  Baird  tnat  a  certain  Mr-  Barnard  who  had 
an  Indian  mound  on  his  farm  at  San  Buenaventura 
(now  shortened  to  Ventura)  had  requested  the 
Smithsonian  to  send  some  one  to  open  it.  Being 
practically  on  the  spot,  we  were  asked  by  Baird 
to  attend  to  the  matter,  and  accordingly  took  it  in 
hand.  At  the  very  outset,  however,  while  trying 
to  hire  a  few  Chinese  for  the  necessary  work,  we 
hit  a  snag.  For  one  and  all  made  the  same  answer, 
"No  workee  today;  me  Happy  New  Year!"  (The 
Chinese  year  formerly  began  in  March.)  Several 
Mexicans  were  finally  secured,  and  one  of  the  im- 
plements they  dug  out  was  said  to  be  unique  among 
aboriginal  relics. 

At  the  time  of  our  visit  a  little  daughter,  Miss 
Maryline,  had  just  arrived  in  the  Barnard  home. 
Twenty-one  years  later  she  received  from  my  hands 
the  Bachelor's  Degree  at  Stanford  University. 

San  Luis  From  Santa  Barbara  we  went  to  San  Luis1  Obispo. 
At  Port  Harford  (its  seaport)  we  found  Northerly 
species,  as  Point  Conception,  midway  between  there 
and  Santa  Barbara,  forms  the  dividing  line  between 
two  faunas.  Here  the  chilled  Japanese  Current  is 
deflected  into  the  sea,  where  it  loses  itself  in  a  broad 
and  vaguely  defined  "whirlpool."  That  great  ocean 

1  Pronounced  "Loo-eece,"  and  accented  on  the  last  syllable;  final  "s" 
is  always  pronounced  in  Spanish. 

n  210  a 


18803  Moving  Northward 

river  or  Asiatic  Gulf  Stream,  the  Kuro-shiwo  or  The  Black 
"Black  Current,"  flows  northward  from  the  Philip-  Current 
pines,  warmly  drenching  the  east  coast  of  Japan. 
It  then  runs  northeastward  to  the  Aleutian  Islands, 
thence  across  to  Sitka,  losing  its  heat  on  the  way 
and  bathing  the  shores  in  mist  and  rain.  Next, 
thoroughly  cooled,  it  bends  southward  along  the 
Pacific  Coast  to  Point  Concepcion,  reducing  sum- 
mer temperatures  to  a  much  lower  point  than  that 
of  corresponding  latitudes  in  the  Atlantic  or  the 
western  Pacific,  and  thus  bearing  Northern  forms 
southward  to  Monterey  and  beyond. 

At  San  Luis  Obispo  we  made  the  personal  ac-  MUUe- 
quaintance  of  Millie-Christine,  the  "Siamese  Twins"  Christine 
of  that  epoch,  two  good-looking  mulatto  girls, 
tragically  bound  together  for  life  and  death.  Rela- 
tively well  educated,  I  may  fairly  say  cultivated, 
they  were  as  distinct  mentally  as  any  pair  of  "identi- 
cal twins,"  conversing  together  and  with  others  in 
the  usual  fashion.  In  San  Luis  Obispo,  also,  we  at- 
tended the  performance  of  a  clever  magician  whom  I 
mainly  remember  from  his  discomfiture  next  day  when 
he  carelessly  let  slip  his  magic  cane  through  a  break 
in  the  wharf.  Attempting  to  hire  some  one  to  dive 
for  it,  he  was  as  helpless  as  any  ordinary  mortal. 

Later  in  March  we  came  to  Monterey.  There,  Monterey 
in  that  former  Spanish  capital  where  some  of  the 
old-timers  were  still  living,  we  found  much  of  in- 
terest. It  also  furnished  our  best  collecting  ground. 
In  the  search  for  material,  we  had  the  energetic 
help  of  a  Portuguese  lad  named  Manuel  Duarte> 
now  a  flourishing  local  fish  dealer.  Among  our 
many  experiences  was  a  day  with  very  low  tide, 
spent  far  out  on  the  rocks  beyond  the  Point  of  Pines, 

C  211  3 


'The  Days  of  a  Man 


spearing  little  blennies  and  sculpins  with  a  sharpened, 
three-tined  fork.  Needless  to  say,  the  water  seemed 
warmer  than  it  now  does  to  either  of  us  ! 

At  Monterey  we  found  a  species  of  Hagfish  — 
Polistotrema  stouti  —  in  considerable  abundance.  This 
eel-shaped,  slimy  creature,  plum  color  and  about 
a  foot  long,  is  persona  non  grqta  with  its  neighbors. 
Its  habits  are  bad.  Fastening  its  sucker-like  mouth 
with  rasping  teeth  within  the  gill  opening  of  a  large 
fish,  it  gnaws  into  the  body,  devouring  all  the  mus- 
cular system  of  its  "host"  and  reducing  it  to  a  mere 
hulk.  Many  large  fishes,  flounders  and  rockfish  es- 
pecially, are  taken  in  this  sad  plight.  When  the 
victim  finally  dies,  the  parasite  makes  its  escape; 
and  sometimes  when  a  poor  wreck  is  hauled  up 
in  a  net,  the  pirate  may  be  observed  thrusting  its 
eyeless  head  from  out  the  hole,  and  then  plumping 
incontinently  into  the  water  in  search  of  a  new 
boarding  house. 

Mission  In  the  Monterey  region  we  investigated  (among 
San  other  places)  the  little  Bay  of  Carmel,  not  far  from 
which  stands  the  old  Mission  of  "San  Carlos  Bor- 
romeo  in  Carmelo,"  overlooking  the  mouth  of  the 
fertile  and  beautiful  valley  of  the  Carmel  River. 
The  roof  of  the  picturesque  church  then  falling  into 
ruins  —  its  beams  having  been  made  of  the  perish- 
able Monterey  pine  —  was  being  restored  by  the 
devoted  Father  Casanova,  at  the  expense  of  Mrs. 
Leland  Stanford.  At  that  same  time  also  Mrs. 
Stanford  set  up  on  the  hill  above  the  spot  where,  in 
1603,  Vizcaino  landed  and  celebrated  mass  under  a 
live  oak,  a  monument  to  Padre  Junipero  Serra, 
founder  of  most  of  the  California  Missions. 

C  212  3 


•c 


i88o]  Junipero  Serra 

Serra  stands  out  as  the  conspicuous  figure  in  the  Carrying 
pious  background  of  California  history.  Lured  by  (?' 
heavenly  visions,  he  left  La  Paz  on  foot  early  in 
1769  in  one  of  Portola's  two  official  land  parties 
designed  to  carry  the  true  faith  to  beautiful  New 
Spain.  In  front  of  each  division  were  driven  a 
hundred  head  of  cattle.  Having  put  behind  them 
nearly  a  thousand  miles  of  barren  cactus-laden 
rock  and  sand,  on  July  i  they  reached  the  gentle 
bay  where  Serra  founded  the  Mission  of  San  Diego 
de  Alcala,  the  first  of  a  long  series  to  "girdle  the 
heathen  land."  Afterward  the  Padre  made  his 
permanent  headquarters  at  Monterey,  the  capital 
of  Alta  (Upper)  California,  and  he  lies  buried  by  the 
old  Mission  Church  of  San  Carlos. 

To  the  north  of  Carmel  Bay  projects  the  pictur-  Ancient 
esque  and  famous  Cypress  Point,  one  of  the  several  cyp™ssfs 
headlands  of  the  pine-clad  peninsula  which  cul- 
minates  in  the  Point  of  Pines.  Cypress  Point  bears  Pines 
a  grove  of  ancient  but  noble  Monterey  Cypresses 
—  Cupressus  macrocarpa  —  many  of  them  so  bent 
and  twisted  by  the  northwest  trades  that  they  seem 
to  belong  to  some  Inferno  of  Dore.  This  particular 
species,  quite  unlike  any  other  conifer  north  of 
Mexico,  is  found  native  only  here  and  on  the  neigh- 
boring Point  Lobos  l  which  bounds  the  bay  on  the 
south.  The  Monterey  Pine  —  Pinus  radiata  —  much 
like  common  Japanese  forms  but  wholly  different  from 
any  other  American  species,  is  also  rigidly  confined  in 
nature  to  a  small  district  around  Monterey.  Both  pine 
and  cypress  grow  readily  from  seed  and  are  planted 
widely  in  California  and  in  southern  Australia. 

1  Lobos,  "wolves,"  a  name  applied  to  the  barking  brown  sea  lion  —  Zalopbus 
calif ornianus. 

C  213  3 


T*he  Days  of  a  Man 


The  Cypress  Point  and  the  Point  of  Pines  are  now  both 

Smii?een~  included  in  the  glorious  "Seventeen-mile  Drive" 
Drive  from  the  Hotel  Del  Monte,  situated  in  a  superb 
park  of  live  oak  and  pine  and  everywhere  known  to 
world  travelers.  The  road  winds  through  a  somber 
pine  forest  out  to  the  ocean's  edge,  then  along  the 
shore  for  many  miles  —  the  .  rock-frayed,  white- 
fringed  break  of  blue  water  against  beach  or  rudely 
jutting  headland  on  the  one  hand,  and  on  the  other 
silvery  dunes  backed  by  primeval  cypresses.  Within 
recent  years,  also,  about  forty  miles  of  similarly 
perfect  road  have  been  cut  across  and  up  the  wooded 
peninsula,  disclosing  noble  views  of  both  Monterey 
Bay  and  the  Pacific.  Around  Pebble  Beach  just  north 
of  Carmel  many  charming  villas  are  now  arising. 

Along  the  whole  coast  from  Carmel  to  Cayucos 
in  San  Luis  Obispo  County,  the  wild  and  pine- 
covered  Santa  Lucia  range  thrusts  itself  abruptly 
into  the  sea.  The  result  is  a  series  of  rincones1 
of  singular  beauty,  and  so  rugged  that  from  Point 
Sur  (about  midway)  to  Cayucos,  there  is  no  room 
La  Punta  for  a  road.  Of  all  these  headlands  the  most  beauti- 
^U'  and  imPre§sive  is  Point  Lobos,  a  granite  prom- 
ontory cut  by  wave  action  into  deep  ravines  up 
which  the  great  surf  of  the  rising  tide  rushes  with 
merciless  force,  breaking  into  wondrous  mighty 
cascades  of  white  foam.  South  of  the  storm-swept 
inlets  of  Alaska  nothing  finer  of  its  kind  appears 
on  any  coast.  At  Lobos,  also,  the  lone,  primeval 
group  of  gnarled,  wind-twisted  cypresses,  clinging 
wherever  soil  remains  on  top  or  side,  lend  their 
peculiar  charm  to  a  spot  beautiful  indeed  without 
them. 

1  Plural  of  rincon  —  big  nose  —  the  Spanish  word  for  headland. 

n  2142 


i88o]        La  Ensenadita  de  Cdrmelo 

The  drive  from  Lobos  to  Sur  challenges  compari- 
son with  the  famous  cornice  routes  of  the  French 
Riviera,  although  it  lacks,  of  course,  the  finished 
beauty  of  those  ancient  highways. 

Thirteen  years  ago  my  wife  Jessie  built  a  modest  A  seaside 
seaside  cottage  at  Carmel,  almost  on  the  Camino  Tetreat 
Real  or  trail  originally  connecting  the  Mission  ot 
San  Carlos  with  the  old  Presidio  or  barracks  at 
Monterey.  This  served  as  a  special  retreat  for 
herself  and  Eric  during  my  various  absences  on 
government  affairs.  Since  then  we  have  spent 
many  delightful  days  in  that  exquisite  spot,  and 
there  the  boy  at  the  age  of  nine  really  began  to  col- 
lect shells.  For  these  reasons  I  take  pleasure  in 
adding  a  few  lines  written  by  me  at  the  time  of  my 
first  visit  to  la  Ensenadita  de  Cdrmelo — "the  little 
bay  of  Carmel." 

Of  all  the  indentations  on  the  coast  of  California,  the  most  Carmel 
picturesque  and  most  charming  is  the  little  bay  of  Carmelo,  Bay 
which  lies  just  south  of  the  point  of  Los  Pinos,  between  this 
and  the  rocky  cape  of  Los  Lobos,  its  blue  waters  sheltered 
from  the  northwest  trades  by  the  pine-clad  peninsula  which 
ends  in  the  reefs  of  the  Point  of  Pines.    No  one  lives  on  this 
bay  at  present  except  a  farmer  or  two,  a  little  colony  of  Chinese 
fishermen  who  have  a  Pescadero  or  fishing  camp  in  the  edge  of 
the  pines,  and  a  little  group  of  Portuguese  (Captain  Verisimo) 
who  watch  for  whales  on  a  rocky  ledge  near  Point  Lobos.1 

When  the  above  was  written,  I  little  thought 
that  one  day  Carmel  would  shelter  its  present 
colony  of  beauty  lovers,  and  among  them  my  own 
family! 

1  From  a  manuscript  report  to  United  States  Census  Bureau,  March,  1880. 


1:2153 


The  Days  of  a  Man  £1880 


The  Ocd-  Our  work  on  the  Coast  centered  naturally  in  San 
Francisco.  There,  through  the  courtesy  of  Louis 
Sloss,  the  worthy  head  of  the  Alaska  Commercial 
Company,  we  had  a  workroom  at  320  Sansome 
Street,  our  office  *  being  meanwhile  near  by  on  Mont- 
gomery in  the  old  Occidental  Hotel.  This  hostelry, 
the  oldest  "first  class"  one  in  town,  maintained  an 
enviable  reputation  for  hospitality  long  after  it  was 
left  in  the  shade  by  finer  and  newer  edifices.  Major 
Hooper,  the  proprietor,  had  always  a  keen  eye  to 
the  comfort  of  his  guests.  A  vase  of  flowers,  or  a 
plate  of  fine  fruit,  or  both  were  at  hand  whenever 
they  would  be  appreciated.  A  guest  from  Kentucky 
never  failed  to  find  a  flat  bottle  where  it  would  do 
the  most  good.  Leaving  for  the  Orient  by  boat 
or  starting  north,  south,  or  east  by  rail,  one  was 
sure  to  have  a  generous  basket  handed  out  at  the 
last  moment.  With  the  death  of  the  Major  and  the 
subsequent  destruction  of  the  house  in  the  fire  of 
1906,  a  characteristic  feature  of  early  days  dis- 
appeared. 

For  a  time  the  most  gifted  man  in  San  Fran- 
cisco, one  "who  did  much  to  give  our  city  its 
cosmopolitan  character,"  had  rooms  only  a  few 
doors  away  up  Bush,  near  Donadieu's  Bush  Street 
Restaurant.  Practically  nobody  then  knew  much 
about  Robert  Louis  Stevenson,  and  I  must  have 
passed  him  indifferently  almost  every  day.  He  was 
living  (as  we  now  know)  in  the  very  depths  of 
depression,  financial  as  well  as  physical.  But  I 
would  give  a  good  deal  to  have  met  him  there,  for 
C  216] 


1880]  In  San  Francisco 

he  passed  away  long  before  my  own  visit  to  Vailima 
—  to  reach  which  (as  he  wrote  to  J.  M.  Barrie) 
"one  must  take  the  boat  at  San  Francisco,  then 
my  place  is  the  second  on  the  left." 

We  did,  however,  make  the  acquaintance  of 
John  Muir,  a  young  Scot,  a  graduate  of  Wisconsin, 
who  had  lived  for  some  time  in  Indianapolis  where 
he  had  been  an  intimate  friend  of  our  friend,  Cath- 
erine Merrill.  Coming  afterward  to  California,  he 
established  himself  in  the  Yosemite  Valley  while 
there  were  still  very  few  who  knew  anything  of  the 
grandeur  and  glory  of  that  incomparable  gorge. 
When  we  met  him  he  had  recently  emerged  from 
several  years  of  hermithood,  to  be  received  with 
marked  appreciation  as  a  result  of  his  delightful 
essays  on  the  High  Sierra.  He  had  also  recently 
married,  and  had  acquired  a  large  ranch  near 
Martinez,  where  he  spent  the  greater  part  of  his 
later  life.  Simple-hearted  and  enthusiastic,  pos- 
sessed of  a  finely  attuned  mind,  he  impressed  his 
personality  strongly  and  without  effort  upon  others. 
James  Bryce,  his  countryman  by  blood,  seems  to  Bryce 
me  much  the  same  type  of  man.  When  Bryce  was 
British  Ambassador  at  Washington,  he  visited  Cali- 
fornia and  became  acquainted  with  Muir,  whom  he 
cordially  admired. 

During  our  stay  in  San  Francisco  we  met  the  "joe" 
leaders  in  the  State  University  at  Berkeley,  especially  LeContf 
the  president,  John  L.  Le  Conte,  and  his  brilliant 
and    devoted    brother,    Joseph,    who   occupied    the 
chair  of  Natural  History,  and  of  whom  I  shall  have 
more  to  say  hereafter.     Naturally,   also,  we  were 
closely  associated  with  the  workers  in  the  Academy 
of  Sciences,  which  then  occupied  a  basement  on  the 

C  217  3 


The  Days  of  a  Man  £1880 

Academy  edge  of  "Chinatown."  Dr.  George  Davidson,  an 
°sdences  eminent  c^v^  engineer  and  geographer,  long  head 
of  the  United  States  Coast  and  Geodetic  Survey, 
was  then  president;  the  curator  of  fishes,  William 
Neale  Lockington,  an  English  naturalist,  gave  us 
material  assistance.  And  in  1879  Lockington  dedi- 
cated to  me  Eopsettajordani,.the  first  fish  ever  named 
in  my  honor.  This  is  the  flounder  called  "  English 
Sole"  by  the  local  fishermen,  a  toothsome  creature 
resembling  the  true  sole  of  Europe  —  Solea  solea  — 
in  flavor,  but  in  no  other  respect,  — not  being  a 
sole  at  all,  and  not  English  either.  Two  other 
self-sacrificing  volunteers  busy  in  the  academy  for 
pure  love  of  the  work  were  Dr.  A.  Kellogg,  the 
botanist,  and  W.  G.  W.  Harford,  the  zoologist, 
with  both  of  whom  we  had  frequent  relations. 
But  the  ablest  of  this  group,  Dr.  John  G.  Cooper, 
the  ornithologist,  had  already  retired  from  technical 
work. 

In  the  early  '8o's  the  city  by  the  Golden  Gate  1 
was  still  a  merry  community  where  Law  and  Order 
were  sometimes  subordinated  to  designs  of  a  more 
personal  character.  At  the  time  of  our  visit  the 
mayor,  a  prominent  clergyman,  was  also  a  leading 
politician,  and  therefore  subject  to  blackmail,  an 
activity  not  yet  disentangled  from  reform.  Both 
reform  and  blackmail  had  their  seat  in  newspaper 
offices.  Editors  were  accordingly  fair  game  to  ag- 
" James  grieved  political  operators.  "James  King  of  Wil- 
PWNft"  ^am>"  as  ne  signe(l  himself,  the  fearless  editor 
of  the  Bulletin,  had  been  shot  by  a  gambler  not 


1  Serene,  indifferent  of  Fate, 
She  sits  beside  the  Golden  Gate. 

BRET  HARTE 


C  218 


POINT  LOBOS 

Photograph  by  J.  Paul  Edwards 


1880]  In  San  Francisco 

long  before  our  arrival  —  a  crime  soon  avenged  by 
the  famous  Vigilance  Committee,  actually  composed 
of  "best  citizens"  whose  patience  had  passed  its 
limit.  During  my  stay  the  son  of  the  mayor  shot 
the  editor  of  the  Chronicle;  but  the  Vigilance  Com- 
mittee was  not  called  out,  the  latter's  enemies  having 
asserted  that  he  got  only  "what  was  coming  to 
him/'  or  words  to  that  effect.  As  to  this  judgment 
I  venture  no  opinion,  having  no  personal  knowledge 
of  the  matters  involved. 

For  entertainment  we  occasionally  attended  the 
seances  of  some  of  the  many  professional  mediums  slon?1 

,  .  r,    . J.    r  .  ,     , .       mediums 

operating  in  the  city.  Spirit  voices  projected  (in 
the  dark)  through  long  trumpets,  banjos  made  to 
float  in  the  air  by  means  of  balloon  gas,  materializa- 
tions in  which  the  form  of  the  medium  or  her  as- 
sistant could  be  detected  in  spite  of  false  beard  and 
other  "spiritual"  accessories,  all  were  part  of  the 
stock  in  trade  of  the  more  clever.  One  whom  we 
visited  went  into  a  trance  in  broad  daylight  for  the 
benefit  of  an  interested  old  gentleman  who  asked 
many  questions  in  his  efforts  to  identify  the  dear 
departed,  arid  thus  gave  clues  which  the  medium, 
was  quick  to  seize.  Finally  he  said:  "This  must  be 
my  mother's  mother."  ''Yes,"  came  the  hasty 
reply;  "I  now  see  clearly  the  letters  G.  M.  M. — 
grandmother  on  the  mother's  side." 

On  our  own  account  we  found  it  easy  to  call  up 
spirits  whose  names  we  wrote  on  paper;  equally 
easy  whether  we  used  the  names  of  real  people, 
alive  or  dead,  or  of  those  who  never  lived.  That 
all  these  manifestations  were  frauds  goes  without 
saying.  As  to  other  mediums  or  psychic  phenomena 
elsewhere,  it  of  course  proves  nothing.  But  only 

C  219  3 


The  Days  of  a  Man  £1875 

the  most  patient  investigation  with  scientific 
methods  can  separate  the  realities  from  illusion  and 
fraud. 

In  magicians  and  sleight-of-hand  performances, 
however,  I  have  always  taken  a  mild  interest. 
As  a  rule,  also,  the  operations  of  acknowledged 
illusionists  are  more  bewildering  and  harder  to  ex- 
plain than  those  of  the  mediums  and  "psychics" 
I  have  myself  happened  to  see.  In  1875  a  man 
named  Brown  was  attracting  much  attention  in 
Indianapolis  as  a  "mind  reader,"  his  skill  being 
due  to  what  he  called  "odic  force."  One  evening 
force'9  Copeland  and  I  offered  ourselves  for  public  ex- 
perimentation, and  the  former  was  given  something 
to  hide  in  the  audience  room.  Brown,  being  blind- 
folded, put  his  hand  on  Copeland's  shoulder  and 
speedily  raced  him  to  the  hidden  object.  The  feat 
was  cleverly  done,  but  we  interpreted  it  as  "muscle 
reading"  rather  than  any  mysterious  divination  of 
the  mind. 

Coming  then  to  me,  Brown  said  I  was  to  con- 
centrate my  mind  on  some  pain  I  might  be  feeling 
at  the  time.  It  being  a  cold  night,  my  feet  were 
chilled  and  I  selected  a  slight  discomfort  in  my 
right  great  toe.  Standing  pat  on  this  involved  no 
muscular  movement;  Brown  found  none  and  gave 
it  up.  He  next  asked  me  to  fancy  an  imaginary 
pain;  I  therefore  thought  that  a  ring  was  pinching 
me,  but  that  also  failed  to  stir  any  muscles,  and  he 
gave  it  up  again,  accusing  me  of  "failure  to  con- 
centrate." Whenever  movement  was  involved,  he 
showed  considerable  skill.  His  "odic  force"  lay 
doubtless  in  a  quick  interpretation  of  involuntary 
impulses  controlling  muscular  action. 

C   220] 


1880]  Chinese  Fishermen 

In  "Chinatown,"  a  little  Old  World  center  with  "China- 
all  its  inbred  vices  and  incidental  virtues  planted  in  town>\ 
the  heart  of  an  intensely  Western  city,  Gilbert  and 
I  found  much  of  interest.  The  San  Francisco 
Chinese,  moreover,  were  even  greedier  fishermen 
than  those  of  San  Diego!  Their  catch  also  was 
mainly  salted  and  dried  for  export  to  China ;  nothing 
being  too  small  for  such  purposes,  they  were  fre- 
quently before  the  courts  for  using  nets  with  too 
fine  a  mesh.  So  I  became  somewhat  expert  in  their 
"pidgin  English"  —  that  is,  "business  English" 
by  which  our  language  is  reduced  to  the  lowest 
terms  possible,  still  remaining  fairly  intelligible; 
and  I  amused  myself  by  describing  their  activities 
in  correct  "pidgin"  verse: 

Mellican  man  go  China  side 

Catchee  China  dishee; 
China  man  go  Mellican  side 

Catchee  Mellican  fishee. 

Once  I  asked  a  Chinese  boat  steward  where  the 
first  officer  was.  The  answer,  "Him  blong  chow," 
expressed  in  correct  and  intelligible  "pidgin"  the 
fact  that  the  man  I  wanted  was  at  dinner. 

A  large  part  of  our  work  on  the  Coast  was  to  A  Chinese 
gather  statistics,   but   it  was   not   easy  to   extract  code 
the  necessary  information  from  a  "Chinaman."  The 
truth,  he  figured,  might  hurt,  while  falsehood  would 
probably  be  harmless!    Hence  his  answers  were  in- 
correct, the  more  so  in  proportion  as  "his  smile  was 
childlike  and  bland."     But  the  Chinese  have  their 
own  code.   A  dealer,  for  instance,  will  always  pay  his 
debts  on  time ;  the  immemorial  custom  of  his  native 
land   takes  care  of  that,  for  to  break  a  contract 

C  221  ] 


The  Days  of  a  Man 


is  to  be  virtually  outlawed  so  far  as  business  is 
concerned.  Nevertheless,  he  may  pay  in  counterfeit 
coin  if  you  are  so  trustful  as  to  accept  it;  that's 
your  own  lookout. 

His  illusions  are  quite  different  from  ours.  He  is 
mortally  afraid  of  the  Feng-shui  or  evil  earth  spirit, 
who  may  be  disturbed  by  an  excavation;  for  much 
better  reasons  he  fears  the  secret  attacks  of  a  rival 
long.  Of  American  methods  of  incantation,  however, 
he  has  his  opinion.  When  the  Lighthouse  Board 
Sam's  wished  to  install  a  foghorn  near  Monterey,  and  the 
ZT*  agent  found  that  the  necessary  location  belonged  to 
inejfec-  a  Chinese,  he  carefully  explained  why  Uncle  Sam 
must  have  the  land.  The  owner  replied:  "Uncle 
Sam  dam  fool.  I  come  over  from  Oakland  to  San 
Francisco  —  big  steam  whistle  on  Goat  Island  blow 
hard  —  dam  fog  come  in  allee  same."  But  once 
when  I  found  a  man  placing  red  paper  trinkets  in  a 
little  Chinese  graveyard  and  asked  him  what  he 
was  doing,  he  turned  and  pointing  upward  said: 
"He  all  same  Joss  who." 

After  a  fairly  thorough  investigation  of  the  marine 
interests  of  San  Francisco  and  neighboring  waters, 
we  went  in  May  directly  to  Astoria,  the  great 
salmon  center  of  our  coast  at  the  mouth  of  the 
Columbia,  though  we  then  remained  only  long 
enough  to  make  a  general  survey  of  the  situation,  as 
we  planned  to  return  later  for  intensive  study  of 
Chinook  the  King  or  Chinook  salmon  during  its  main  run  in 
salmon  enormous  numbers  in  late  June.  This  is  the  only 
one  of  the  five  species  which  has  economic  im- 
portance in  the  Columbia  or  Sacramento.  Proceed- 
ing now  northward  to  Puget  Sound,  we  investigated 

C   222   3 


i88o]  Washington  Territory 

the  fisheries  in  the  various  towns,  especially  Seattle, 
Port  Townsend,  New  Westminster,  and  Victoria. 

By  1880  the  territory  of  Washington  was  beginning  puget 
to  feel  ambitious.  Already  a  number  of  small  Sound 
saw-mill  settlements  had  sprung  up  along  the  mag- 
nificent landlocked  expanse  of  Puget  Sound.  The 
most  important  cities  were  Olympia,  the  capital, 
and  Port  Townsend,  the  metropolis.  Tacoma 
boasted  fewer  than  a  dozen  houses,  but  the  rail- 
way  from  Portland  having  reached  the  town,  it 
had  great  prospects  due  to  its  incomparable  site, 
a  smooth  plateau  sloping  gently  to  the  sound. 
Directly  in  front,  moreover,  towers  the  majestically 
beautiful  pyramid  of  Mount  Rainier,  14,520  feet 
high,  illumined  on  our  first  evening  by  a  superb 
alpenglow,  the  rosy  reflection  on  snow  from  red 
sunset  clouds.  Yet  its  noble  harbor,  Commence- 
ment Bay,  is  not  well  adapted  for  shipping,  because 
the  great  depth  of  water,  the  result  of  deep  scoring 
by  glaciers  from  the  mountain,  makes  it  difficult 
for  anchors  to  touch  bottom. 

The  neighboring  town  of  Seattle,  destined  to  be- 
come a  great  city,  —  its  whole  water  front  being 
available  for  wharves  and  docks,  —  was  then  just 
beginning  to  find  itself.  And  even  so  early  the 
people  modestly  maintained  that  some  day  the 
population  of  Washington  would  be  large  enough 
to  justify  its  recognition  as  a  state.  With  that  idea  An  infant 
in  mind  they  had  already  laid  at  Seattle  the  founda- 
tion  of  the  future  State  University,  an  infant  in- 
stitution located  in  a  private  residence  on  the  hill. 
The  faculty  consisted  of  Dr.  Alexander  J.  Anderson, 
the  president,  and  his  wife  and  daughter.  To  the 
forty  students,  more  or  less,  I  gave  a  lecture  on  the 

C  223  ] 


The  Days  of  a  Man  Ci88o 

Dogfish  —  Squalus  sucklii  —  a  kind  of  shark  locally 
abundant.  Among  the  eager  lads  I  remember  one 
"Eddie  Meany,"  l  now  for  twenty-three  years  the 
professor  of  American  History  in  the  flourishing 
university  grown  from  the  humble  beginning  I 
have  indicated. 

Since  that  time  other  citie$  have  risen  about  the 
Sound,  but  in  population  and  business  Seattle  re- 
tains a  long  lead.  Meanwhile  Olympia,  still  the 
capital,  and  Port  Townsend  (both  isolated  from  the 
currents  of  traffic)  have  grown  but  little  —  the 
latter,  indeed,  not  at  all. 

At  In  the  course  of  our  work  we  spent  some  time  at 
Neab  Nean  Bay  and  Waada  Island  at  the  entrance  of  the 
Straits  of  Juan  de  Fuca,  the  outlet  to  Puget  Sound. 
There  on  the  Makah  Indian  Reservation  we  saw 
much  of  the  natives,  and  acquired  some  mastery 
of  the  Chinook  jargon  —  a  mixture  of  Siwash, 
English,  and  French,  comparable  to  the  "pidgin 
English"  of  China.  A  white  man  is  Boston  man; 
an  Indian,  Siwash;  very,  hyas;  worthless,  cultus. 
Thus  hyas  cultus  Boston  man  means  a  white  idler; 
Boston  Siwash,  a  negro  or  Chinese.  Meaning  often 
matches  sound;  skookum  chuck,  for  example,  de- 
notes a  waterfall.  French  words  are  not  uncommon, 
laselle  being  a  saddle  —  latete,  the  head.  And 
Siwash  boys  are  frequently  eager  to  secure  "Boston 
names/'  among  which  Lincoln  is  a  favorite  one. 

The  Indians  of  the  Northwest  are  relatively  in- 
dustrious and  competent,  so  that  many  of  them 
hold  their  own  in  business,  or  even  in  the  profes- 
sions, although  it  must  be  admitted  that  most 

1  Edmond  Stephen  Meany. 

C  224  3 


W 


i88o]  About  Puget  Sound 

of  their  educated  men  are  at  least  half  white.  The 
conservative  among  them,  however,  still  cling  to 
primitive  methods.  One  night  I  watched  an  old- 
time  "medicine  man"  in  the  tent  of  a  fever-stricken  ™canta~ 
Siwash.  After  many  incantations  he  succeeded  in 
materializing  the  malady  in  his  own  mouth  in  the 
form  of  a  little  trout  which  he  then  spat  out,  re- 
lieving the  patient  and  effecting  a  cure.  If  lizards 
had  been  available  about  Cape  Flattery,  he  would 
probably  have  used  one  of  them,  as  is  said  to  be  the 
custom  farther  south. 

While  not  required  by  our  instructions  to  do  so, 
we  nevertheless  inspected  the  (Canadian)  fisheries 
of  Fraser  River,  one  of  the  great  salmon  streams 
of  the  world.  There  the  Red  Salmon  or  Blueback 
—  locally  "  Sockeye "  1  —  predominates.  I  should 
here  explain  that  the  relative  abundance  of  this 
form  in  the  Columbia  and  Fraser  rivers  is  due  to 
the  multitude  of  lakes  tributary  to  the  latter,  for  the 
Red  Salmon  spawns  only  in  a  stream  above  a  lake 
in  which  the  young  always  spend  the  first  year.2 

At  Victoria  on  Vancouver  Island  we  remained  for  Victoria 
a  time,  studying  the  fishes  which  swarm  in  the 
fine  rock-bound,  landlocked  harbor.  This  ultra- 
conservative  city  imagined  itself  a  bit  of  England 
dropped  on  a  distant  shore.  But  Vancouver,  a 
frontier  village  on  the  mainland,  became  typically 
Western,  with  nothing  to  differentiate  it  from  a 
frontier  village  of  our  own  Northwest.  Since  that 
day  it  alone  of  the  Canadian  towns  on  Puget  Sound 

1  "Sockeye"  is  a  corruption  of  the  Chinook  name,  which  sounds  rather  like 
Sukkegh, 

2  It  may  also  be  noted  that  in  numerous  lakes  of  Idaho,  Washington,  and 
northern  Japan  many  individuals  never  descend  to  the  sea,  remaining  land- 
locked all  their  lives  and  rarely  attaining  more  than  a  foot  in  length. 

C  225  3 


The  Days  of  a  Man  Ci88o 

has  shared  the  rapid  growth  of  Seattle  and  its  neigh- 
bors —  Tacoma,  Bellingham,  and  Everett. 

One  day  we  worked  at  Saanich  Arm,  a  deep  fjord 
of  clear  water  some  miles  to  the  north  of  Victoria. 
A  potiatcb  A  great  native  feast  or  potlatch,  which  drew  In- 
dians from  all  over  the  island,  was  then  going  on 
at  the  head  of  the  arm.  During  a  potlatch  the  host 
not  only  feeds  all  his  guests,  but  with  excess  of 
hospitality  gives  away  every  movable  thing  he  has. 
Afterward  he  slowly  recuperates  by  attendance  at 
similar  functions  arranged  by  his  neighbors. 

When  we  attempted  to  turn  over  to  them  the 
surplus  of  our  net,  the  Indians  scorned  mere  surf 
fish  and  herring,  all  we  had  to  offer,  their  epicurean 
taste  demanding  salmon,  halibut,  or  eulachon. 


From  the  standpoint  of  science  the  most  im- 
portant result  of  our  year  on  the  Pacific  Coast  was 
the  making  of  an  accurate  list  of  the  shore  fishes, 
about  400  in  all,  eighty  of  which  were  new  to  science. 
On  the  economic  side,  by  far  the  weightiest  matter 
was  the  tracing  of  the  characters  of  the  five  species 
of  salmon  in  Pacific  Coast  rivers,  especially  the 
Columbia,  Fraser,  and  Sacramento. 

The  five  These  are  popularly  known  as  the  King  Salmon  or  Chinook 

salmon        —  Oncorhyncbus  tschawytscba;    the   Red    Salmon  —  Oncorhyn- 

chus  nerka;    the  Silver  Salmon  —  Oncorhynchus  kisutscb;    the 

Calico   Salmon  —  Oncorhyncbus  keta;    and   the   Humpback  — 

Oncorhyncbus  gorbuscha.1    All  spawn  but  a  single  time,    usually 

1  Stefan  Petrovich  Krascheninikov,  in  his  "Description  of  Kamchatka  and 
the  Kuril  Islands"  (1764),  mentioned  the  Russian  vernacular  names  of  the 
five  kinds  of  salmon,  and  in  1792  Walbaum  made  picturesque  use  of  them  in 
scientific  nomenclature. 

C  226  3 


i88o]  Salmon  Instincts 

at  the  age  of  four  years  in  the  larger  species,  at  two  in  the  smaller  Spawning 
Humpback;  and  every  individual,  male  or  female,  dies  after  habits 
spawning.  The  two  noble  salmon,  the  Chinook  and  the  Red, 
ascend  streams  to  their  fountain  heads.  Salmon  are  known  to 
run  up  the  Yukon  as  far  as  the  streams  at  the  head  of  Lake 
Labarge  —  that  is,  some  1800  miles.  Both  King  Salmon  and 
Red  Salmon  go  up  the  Columbia  to  the  Bitter  Root  Mountains 
of  Idaho,  a  distance  of  over  a  thousand  miles.  Red  Salmon, 
as  already  noted,  spawn  only  above  a  lake;  as  a  matter  of 
fact,  also,  the  species  has  never  even  once  been  seen  in  a  stream 
without  a  lake.  Yet  it  makes  no  difference  whether  the  in- 
evitable water  lies  only  five  or  six  'miles  from  the  sea,  as  in  the 
case  of  Lake  Boca  de  Quadra,  or  whether,  as  in  the  case  of 
Labarge,  it  is  enormously  distant. 

One  of  the  most  difficult  problems  in  animal  psychology, 
as  yet  unsolved,  concerns  this  extraordinary  instinct.  How, 
when  eggs  and  milt  are  ripening,  does  a  Red  Salmon  dis- 
tinguish between  streams  that  have  lakes  and  those  that  have 
not?  Has  he  perhaps  a  lingering  remembrance  dating  from  the 
time  he  drifted,  a  fingerling,  tail  foremost  down  to  the  sea,  of 
the  location  of  the  lake  in  which  he  grew  up?  Perhaps. 
And  why  is  the  Red  Salmon  alone  so  attracted  to  lakes,  while 
all  other  forms  are  totally  indifferent  to  them?  Again,  how 
does  he  know  when  to  start?  The  Columbia  is  a  whole  sum- 
mer's job;  the  Chilcoot,  the  Cfyilcat,  the  Karluk,  or  the  Boca 
de  Quadra  can  be  ascended  in  a  day. 

At  Astoria  the  three  firms  of  Booth,  Kinney,  and 
Badollet  had  just  begun  to  can  salmon,  which  they 
shipped  all  over  the  world;  to  this  industry  Gilbert 
and  I  have  since  had  a  continuous  relation.  Our 
report  in  the  Census  of  1880  was  the  first  serious 
study  of  salmon  fishery  and  its  methods.  I  myself 
was  connected  with  almost  all  investigations  con- 
cerning it  for  the  next  thirty  years.  Gilbert's  re- 
sponsibility still  endures,  a  series  of  intensive  studies 
being  now  (1920)  carried  on  in  Alaska  under  his 
direction.  One  important  result  of  recent  research 

n  227  3 


The  Days  of  a  Man  £1880 

is  his  definite  determination  of  the  age  of  an  in- 
dividual by  a  study  of  its  scales.  These  grow  in 
minute  concentric  ridges  or  rings,  those  produced 
in  winter,  the  period  of  slowest  growth,  lying  close 
together  and  forming  definite  bands  which  are 
Age  of  readily  counted  under  the  microscope.  By  this 
salmon  means  he  was  able  to  verify. our  previous  assump- 
tion that  the  King  Salmon  spawns  usually  at  four 
years,  though  some  individuals  delay  until  the 
fifth,  sixth,  or  seventh  year,  and  a  few  (all  males) 
spawn,  though  more  or  less  prematurely,  at  three. 
But  these  last  are  Nature's  windfalls  and  count  for 
nothing  in  the  continuation  of  the  species.  At  four 
years  the  average  weight  is  not  far  from  twenty- 
two  pounds;  old  individuals,  late-maturing,  may 
reach  eighty  or  even  more. 

The  In  the  Columbia,  as  in  all  the  streams  up  to  Sitka, 

run  aiso  prodigious  numbers  of  eulachon  —  Tha- 
leichthys  pacificus  —  a  little  smelt-like  fish  with  "'the 
spawning  habits  of  a  salmon.  When  absolutely 
fresh  and  not  "spent,"  it  is  in  my  judgment  the 
most  delicious  of  all  fishes  —  delicate,  fragrant, 
saturated  with  an  exquisite  and  readily  digested  oil. 
William  Clark  (of  the  Lewis  and  Clark  Expedition) 
expressed  the  same  opinion  at  Astoria  a  century 
ago.  After  the  spawning  season,  however,  the 
flesh  becomes  mealy  and  free  from  oil,  although  still 
excellent  as  food. 

The  Indians  of  southern  Alaska  put  the  eulachon 
into  large  vats  containing  hot  stones  to  try  out  the 
oil,  of  which  they  are  very  fond,  notwithstanding 
that  the  huge  catch  spoils  on  their  hands  and  the 
place  can  be  smelt  for  miles.  "Eulachon"  looks 
C  228  3 


i88o]     Introduction  of  Eastern  Fishes 

like  Greek,  but  it  is  really  Indian;    as  spoken  by 
the  natives,  it  would  be  spelled  "Ulchn." 


At  Astoria  I  secured  the  first  shad  —  Alosa  sapidissima  —  Shad, 
recorded  from  the  Pacific  Coast,  and  sent  it  on  to  Washington,   striped 
Eggs  and  young  fish  had   been   brought  from  the   Potomac 
and  planted  in  the  Sacramento  in  1877  by  the  California  com- 
missioner  of  fisheries,  Benjamin    B.  Redding,   Mark   Hopkins 
of   Sacramento    defraying    the    cost.     The    species    has   since 
enormously  multiplied  on  the  Coast,  so  that  it  is  now  more 
plentiful   here   than   in   the  Atlantic   and   spawns  in  all  the 
large  streams  from  the    Sacramento   northward   to   southern 
Alaska. 

At  the  same  time  the  young  of  the  Striped  Bass  —  Roccus 
lineatus  —  the  Horned  Pout  —  Ameiurus  nebulosus  —  and  the 
Fork-tailed  Catfish  of  the  Potomac  —  Ameiurus  catus  —  were 
also  brought  over.  Each  then  multiplied  after  its  kind,  as  did 
the  later  importations  of  the  Large-mouth  Black  Bass  — 
Micropterus  salmoides  —  the  Bluegill  —  Lepomis  pallidus  — 
and  (in  the  Columbia)  the  Yellow  Perch  —  Perca  flavescens 
—  and  the  Crappie  —  Pomoxis  sparoides.  The  Carp  —  Cypri- 
nus  carpio  —  was  also  successfully  introduced  at  about  the 
same  time,  becoming  as  elsewhere  in  America  an  unmitigated 
nuisance,  for  it  roots  in  the  ground  like  a  pig,  and  keeps  slug- 
gish waters  constantly  muddy.  Since  its  introduction  Clear 
Lake,  the  largest  of  the  volcanic  depressions  in  California,  no 
longer  justifies  the  name. 

In  September  our  work  was  finished.  Our  manu- 
script report  we  had  sent  back  to  Washington, 
bunch  by  bunch,  as  soon  as  it  was  ready,  to  be  edited 
and  published  as  part  of  Goode's  general  report  on 
the  fishing  interests  of  the  United  States.  Gilbert  Tropical 
now  started  for  Washington  by  way  of  Mazatlan  and 
Panama,  a  long  detour  on  which  he  secured  the  first 
coherent  knowledge  of  the  fish  fauna  of  the  west 
coast  of  tropical  America.  The  next  winter  he  again 
visited  the  Isthmus,  collecting  a  large  amount  of 

C  2293 


The  Days  of  a  Man  Ci88o 

additional  material,  from  which  we  prepared  an 
extensive  treatise  on  the  fishes  from  Mazatlan  south- 
ward; but  specimens  and  manuscripts  alike  were 
destroyed  in  the  fire  of  1883  at  the  University  of 
Indiana. 

The  In  1880  the  first  attempt  at  digging  a  Panama 

Canal  was  being  made  under  the  auspices  of  Ferdi- 
nand de  Lesseps.  But  living  was  very  precarious 
there  on  account  of  poisonous  malarial  fevers  attrib- 
uted then  to  the  escape  of  " miasma"  from  the 
earth,  but  now  known  to  be  borne  from  person  to 
person  solely  by  mosquitoes.  Uncertainty  of  life  be- 
gets moral  recklessness,  a  fact  amply  verified  by  the 
French  engineers  on  the  Isthmus.  Of  the  seventy 
or  more  employed  there  in  1880,  very  many  had 
passed  away  before  1881,  when  Gilbert  made  his 
second  visit.  Later,  however,  as  all  the  world  knows, 
studies  of  the  mosquito's  relationship  to  yellow  fever 
by  Dr.  Walter  Reed  and  his  colleagues  showed  the 
nature  and  origin  of  the  disease  and  its  allies.  And 
now,  following  the  extermination  of  the  plague 
bearer,  Panama  is  as  healthy  as  any  hot  seaport 
can  well  be. 

5 

Tabof  In  September  I  returned  home  by  way  of  Lake 
trout  Tahoe  and  Salt  Lake  City.  At  Tahoe  City  I  made 
a  collection  of  the  lake  fishes,  some  of  them  new  to 
science,  giving  special  attention  to  the  splendid 
trout  —  Salmo  henshawi  —  characteristic  of  those 
waters  as  of  all  others  tributary  to  the  basin  of  the 
post-glacial  Lake  Lahontan,  which  once  filled  the 
interior  of  Nevada. 
C  230] 


18803  Utah  Fishes 


In  Utah  I  stopped  for  a  time  at  Provo,  the 
"  Garden  City/'  to  study  the  fish  fauna  of  the  valley 
of  the  Great  Salt  Lake.  This  investigation  opened 
new  problems,  economic  and  otherwise  —  one  of 
them  a  matter  of  conservation,  for  thousands  of 
trout  entered  the  irrigation  ditches  from  the  Provo 
and  Jordan  rivers,  only  to  be  scattered  high  and  dry 
over  the  meadows  of  Zion. 

In  Provo  I  received  considerable  help  from  Peter  A  Mormon 
Madsen,    a    shrewd    but    unsophisticated    Mormon  fnend 
elder  of  Danish  birth,  who  lived  on  the  shores  of 
Utah  Lake,  where,  with  several  wives  and  an  over- 
flowing family  of  strapping  lads,  he  maintained  him- 
self by  fishing.     Twenty-five  years  later,  revisiting 
Provo,  I  called  on  Madsen,  then  a  bishop.    The  old 
man  at  once  sent  for  a  photographer  in  order  to  have 
a  picture  of  himself  and  me  together,  a  memorial 
of  former  days. 

As  a  geologist  to  some  degree,  I  was  much  in-  Lake 
terested  in  the  enormous  post-glacial  Lake  Bonne- 
ville,  of  which  the  Great  Salt  Lake  is  the  main  relic. 
High  above  the  latter  on  every  side  there  plainly 
appear  successive  terraces,  indicating  ancient  levels 
which  obtained  when  the  inflow  from  melting  glaciers 
was  much  greater  than  that  from  the  present  tribu- 
taries, the  Provo,  Jordan,  Weber,  and  Bear  rivers. 
In  summer  time  the  lake  itself  is  salt  to  saturation, 
being  thus  so  heavy  that  one  floats  like  a  cork, 
and  the  only  trouble  is  to  keep  one's  head  out  of 
the  smarting  water.  Of  animal  life  there  is  none 
save  the  larva  of  a  certain  fly  and  a  species  of  brine 
shrimp. 

The  fish  fauna  of  the  tributary  streams  is  approxi- 
mately that  of  the  Snake  River,  into  which  the 

C  231  3 


The  Days  of  a  Man  Ci88o 

A  great  drainage  of  Lake  Bonneville  used  to  run.  Utah 
Lake,  at  the  head  of  the  Jordan  flowing  in  from 
the  south,  is  full  of  fine  trout,  and  my  Mormon 
friends  used  to  claim  it  as  "the  greatest  sucker 
pond  in  the  Universe,"  three  large  species  —  Chas- 
mistes  liorus,  Chasmistes  fecundus,  and  Catostomus 
ardens  —  swarming  there  in  prodigious  numbers. 

he  At  the  time  of  my  visit  to  Utah  there  was  much 

Mormon  discussion  in  the  East  about  the  "  Mormon  menace/' 
and  many  thought  polygamy  should  be  "stamped 
out"  by  military  force.  In  any  nation  one  may 
always  find  intolerant  supporters  of  conventional  be- 
liefs, who  would  "stamp  out"  every  form  of  opinion 
which  they  have  come  "to  view  with  alarm."  But 
really  serious  objection  could  then  be  made  to 
certain  features  of  Mormonism;  namely,  polygamy 
and  autocratic  control.  The  first  had  already  begun 
to  pass;  the  second,  however,  was  still  much  in  evi- 
dence. For  the  theocratic  hierarchy  of  the  "Latter- 
Day  Saints,"  through  a  system  of  tithes  and  by 
means  of  its  business  branch,  "Zion  Cooperative 
Mercantile  Association,"  held  absolute  mastery  over 
all  Utah  outside  Salt  Lake  and  Ogden  as  well  as 
over  much  of  Idaho  and  Nevada.  Entire  control 
of  irrigation  and  markets  lay  in  the  hands  of  the 
bishops  and  elders;  a  thumb  on  the  irrigating  ditch, 
and  the  crops  perished  in  the  fields! 

While  in  the  territory,  therefore,  I  gave  some 
attention  to  the  special  problems  of  Mormonism, 
on  which  subject  I  prepared  an  essay  read  several 
times  publicly  but  never  printed.  In  it  I  tried  to 
make  clear  a  number  of  points,  among  them  the 
necessity  of  tolerance. 
C  2323 


i88o]  The  Latter-Day  Saints 

The  Mormons  are,  after  all,  at  bottom  very  much 
like  other  people,  the  sect  having  been  originally 
solidified  and  confirmed  in  its  peculiar  tenets  by 
the  relentless  persecution  from  which  it  suffered  at 
Nauvoo  (Illinois)  and  elsewhere.  And  the  fearful 
journey  across  the  plains  to  the  land  of  "Deseret" 
gave  a  sanctity  to  the  hope  by  which  their  spirits 
were  upborne.  To  the  small  early  group  of  Ameri- 
can stock  has  been  added,  by  a  system  of  prose- 
lytism  both  ingenious  and  effective,  a  large  body  of 
simple-hearted  and  kindly  European  peasants,  mostly 
from  the  Scandinavian  countries.  All  these  form  a 
population  which,  as  a  whole,  is  peaceable,  sober, 
and  devout  —  holding  perhaps  to  more  articles  of 
faith  than  most  of  us  would  accept,  but  good  citizens 
from  any  point  of  view,  and  of  the  sturdy  stock 
from  which  loyal  Americans  are  made.  In  my 
judgment,  also,  the  only  remedy  for  those  features 
of  Mormonism  to  which  we  had  the  right  to  object 
lay,  not  in  suppression,  imprisonment,  or  blood- 
shed, nor  in  expropriation  of  church  properties,  but 
in  education  and  assimilation.  This  result,  I  claimed, 
would  naturally  follow  schooling  and  increasing 
contact  with  the  outside  world;  in  the  free  air  of 
modernism,  the  antiquated  theory  which  underlies 
polygamy  would  soon  pass  away. 

Events  proved  the  wisdom  of  moderate  counsels.  Value 
Plural  marriage  has  ceased  to  be  a  feature  of  the  °f  . 

A  .-  ° .  .,       patience 

Mormon  practice  in  our  country  —  not  primarily 
because  it  was  made  illegal  by  national  legisla- 
tion, but  because  a  different  ideal  has  come  to  pre- 
vail. The  railways  centering  in  Salt  Lake  City  and 
Ogden  have  brought  Utah  into  the  Union.  Its 
ideals  and  its  politics  are  now  national,  and  its 

C  233  3 


The  Days  of  a  Man  Ci88o 

church  is  simply  one  among  many  Christian  denomi- 
nations. And  however  much  we  may  regret  the 
multiplication  of  sects  to  which  we  do  not  personally 
belong,  it  is  the  natural  way  in  which  religious 
feeling  expresses  itself  in  democracy. 


C2343 


CHAPTER  TEN 


ON  my  return  to  the  University  in  the  early  fall,  I  Building 
once  more  devoted  my  energies  to  teaching,  putting  UP  a 
forth  special  efforts  on  behalf  of  those  students  who 
showed  a  genuine  love  of  nature,  as  well  as  of  those 
who  found  in  my  laboratory  a  kind  of  training  they 
received  nowhere  else.  As  a  consequence,  a  number 
of  excellent  men  were  soon  drawn  to  us  from  various 
parts  of  the  West  by  the  opportunity  for  original 
study  in  Zoology  and  Geology;  and  the  scientific 
work  of  the  state,  at  least  so  far  as  those  two  branches, 
and  later  Botany  also,  are  concerned,  has  ever  since 
been  mainly  centered  in  Bloomington. 

To  meet  the  needs  of  my  students  it  now  became 
necessary  to  modify  the  conventional  curriculum. 
As  I  have  before  explained,  up  to  that  time  colleges 
generally  (the  denominational  schools  in  particular) 
had  maintained  fixed  courses,  a  few  electives  only 
being  grudgingly  allowed,  and  these  postponed  as 
a  rule  to  the  senior  year.  That  is,  under  pressure  of 
student  demands,  the  classical  curriculum  had  al- 
ready begun  to  break,  yielding  little  by  little  to 
courses  regarded  by  the  classicists  as  "inferior," 
with  modern  languages  in  place  of  Greek,  and 
sometimes  fragmentary  science  as  a  partial  sub- 
stitute. The  new  courses,  composed  of  odds  and  Varying 
ends,  were  known  as  "Literature,"  "Science,"  or  de^rees 
"Philosophy,"  and  led  to  the  Bachelor's  Degree  of 
B.L.,  Ph.B.,  or  B.S.,  according  to  their  nominal 
make-up. 


The  Days  of  a  Man  Ci88i 

Patch-  To  these  "patchwork"  arrangements  I  had  con- 
sistently  objected;  every  college  course  should  have 
some  one  line  of  work  as  a  backbone.  As  Agassiz 
used  to  say,  "the  mind  is  made  strong  by  the 
thorough  possession  of  something."  It  was  the  chief 
merit  of  the  classical  course  that  it  had  backbone, 
but  its  central  axis  of  culture  was  by  no  means 
adapted  to  all  kinds  of  brain  stuff.  Intellect  feeds 
on  what  it  digests;  insistence  on  the  same  train- 
ing for  all  is  violence  to  "the  democracy  of  the 
intellect." 

For  some  kinds  of  students  the  classical  course 
was  well  adapted.  Unfortunately,  however,  it  was 
often  conducted  in  such  a  way  as  to  give  point  to 
the  argument  I  have  occasionally  heard  in  England, 
that  "teachers  incompetent  to  handle  the  modern 
branches  do  well  enough  in  Latin." 

In  urging  the  claims  of  science,  I  had  no  desire 
to  supplant  Latin  or  Greek,  but  simply  to  give 
every  one  the  right  to  choose  in  accordance  with 
his  own  powers  and  tastes.  A  goodly  number  of 
young  people  do  not  take  to  Latin  literature,  — 
from  it  they  draw  no  intellectual  nourishment,  — 
and  by  confining  college  work  to  the  classics,  faculties 
had  deprived  many  engineers,  naturalists,  business 
men,  and  even  some  historians  of  university  train- 
of  ing.  The  value  of  Greek  to  those  whom  Emerson 

Greek  cajjs  « Greek-minded  men"  I  would  not  question. 
As  Thoreau  observed,  "Those  who  talk  of  forgetting 
Greek  are  those  who  never  knew  it."  And  I  regret 
not  knowing  more  Greek  myself,  not  so  much  for 
the  sake  of  its  noble  literature,  perhaps,  as  for  the 
language,  its  fine,  sonorous  syllables  having  taken 
such  a  large  part  in  word  framing.  But  I  am  strongly 

C  2363 


i88i]  Evolution  of  the  College  Curriculum 

convinced  of  the  folly  of  making  education  hang  on 
any  one  peg. 

Advanced  work,  also,  has  higher  training  value  Thorough- 
than  the  elementary,  and  to  have  it  in  some  one  ness  . 

. .         .  i         •  i  •  essential 

line  is  more  strengthening  than  to  acquire  a  smatter- 
ing of  many  things.  Furthermore,  advanced  work 
that  bears  a  relation  to  one's  own  life  is  better  than 
something  that  does  not.  Indeed,  very  little  work 
of  the  highest  order  is  ever  done  without  the  element 
of  volition,  and  the  will  to  work  comes  either  from 
love  of  a  study  for  itself,  or  from  recognition  of  its 
relation  to  one's  future.  Such  a  view  of  education 
inevitably  leads  to  a  generous  freedom  of  election. 
The  duty  of  real  teachers  is  to  adapt  the  work  to 
the  student,  not  the  student  to  the  work.  Higher 
education  should  thus  foster  divergence  instead  of 
conformity,  its  function  being  not  to  bring  youths 
to  a  predetermined  standard,  but  to  help  each  to 
make  the  most  of  his  inborn  talents.  A  prearranged 
course  of  study  is  like  ready-made  clothing,  fitting 
nobody  in  particular;  it  is  the  acme  of  educational 
laziness. 

In  the  University  of  Indiana  the  elective  system  Elective 
now  began  to  creep  in  slowly.    At  one  time  I  sue-  s^te™ 
ceeded  in  arranging  that  sophomores  should  be  al-  infancy 
lowed  to  choose  between  Biology  and  Latin  for  a 
year's  work.    To  the  great  surprise  of  the  professor 
of  Latin  his  best  students  took  advantage  of  the 
opportunity,  and  the  leader  of  these,  Carl  H.  Eigen- 
mann,  found  in  Zoology  the  passion  of  his  life. 

Eigenmann,  though  reared  in  southern  Indiana,  was  born  in 
Germany,  and  possessed  the  enduring  German  qualities  of  in- 
veterate persistence  and  endless  patience  with  detail.  In  time 
he  became  instructor  in  my  department.  Later  he  spent  some 

1:2373 


The  Days  of  a  Man  ri88i 

Conspicu-  years  of  research  in  California,  being  then  (1891)  called  back 

ous  to  the  university  as  professor  of  Zoology.     Ultimately,   as  a 

under-        result  of  many  expeditions  to  South  America,  largely  in  con- 

sludents      necti°n  w^tn  tne  Carnegie  Museum  at  Pittsburgh,  he  came  to 

be  the  highest  authority  on  the  river  fish  fauna  of  the  whole 

southern  continent. 

Conspicuous  also  among  our  zoological  students  was  Barton 
W.  Evermann,1  who  followed  Eigenmann,  his  classmate,  as  in- 
structor in  charge  of  my  laboratory.  Evermann  went  after- 
wards as  professor  of  Zoology  to  the  State  Normal  School  at 
Terre  Haute,  and  served  still  later,  for  many  years,  as  zo- 
ological expert  of  the  United  States  Bureau  of  Fisheries.  The 
latter  position  he  held  until  1913,  publishing  meanwhile  nu- 
merous papers  and  being  associated  with  me  in  the  authorship 
of  several  books,  the  most  important  of  which  is  "The  Fishes 
of  North  and  Middle  America,"  in  four  volumes.2  Upon  leav- 
ing the  Bureau  of  Fisheries,  he  became  curator  of  the  Cali- 
fornia Academy  of  Sciences,  an  office  he  has  successfully  filled, 
a  superb  series  of  landscape  groups  of  animals  in  their  natural 
environment,  completed  by  him,  being  the  most  striking  feature 
of  the  Academy  Museum. 

Two  other  members  of  the  same  class,  Charles  L.  Edwards 
and  Jerome  F.  McNeill,  were  also  special  students  of  mine. 
Edwards  became  a  well-known  naturalist,  and  after  having 
served  as  professor  in  Eastern  institutions,  he  some  years  ago 
took  charge  of  science  teaching  in  thfe  schools  of  Los  Angeles. 
McNeill  afterward  devoted  himself  to  Entomology. 

Another  youth  who  promised  to  reach  the  front  rank  in 
Zoology  was  Charles  H.  Bollman,  a  native  of  Bloomington, 
who  devoted  himself  with  remarkable  energy  and  persistence 
to  the  study  of  fishes  and  insects.  In  company  with  Bert 
Fesler,  a  fellow  student  of  whom  I  shall  subsequently  speak,  he 
undertook  in  1887  an  exploration  of  the  Okefinokee  Swamp  in 
southern  Georgia.  There  he  was  attacked  by  malarial  fever, 
from  which  he  died,  to  the  distinct  loss  of  American  science. 
His  admirable  papers  on  insects  were  afterward  reprinted  as 
a  special  volume  by  the  Smithsonian.  Still  another  gifted 
young  naturalist,  of  varied  interests  but  brief  career,  was 

1  See  Chapter  vn,  page  169.  2  See  Chapter  xxi,  page  524. 

1:2383 


i88i]     Students  of  Zoology  in  Indiana 

William  W.  Norman,  who  became  professor  in  the  University 
of  Texas  and  died  untimely. 

Among  other  fine  fellows  in  my  department  were  Willis  S. 
Blatchley,  who  became  state  geologist  of  Indiana;  Aldred  S. 
Warthin,  botanist,  now  professor  of  Pathology  in  the  University 
of  Michigan;  and  Ernest  P.  Bicknell,  who  rose  to  the  headship 
of  a  division  of  the  American  Red  Cross. 

Among  graduate  students  who  took  their  Doctor's  degree  Graduate 
with  me  were  Seth  E.  Meek,  later  known  for  his  explorations  students 
of  the  rivers  of  Mexico  and  Central  America  while  acting  as 
curator  in  the  Field  Museum  at  Chicago,  and  Oliver  P.  Jenkins, 
whose  best  zoological  work  was  the  investigation  of  the  fish 
fauna  of  Hawaii.     Jenkins,   however,   devoted   himself  after- 
ward  to   Physiology   and   became  the  first   professor  of  that 
subject   in   Stanford  University,  retiring   as  emeritus  in  1916. 

To  a  somewhat  different  category  belonged  Gilbert  (already 
amply  introduced),  who  had  become  assistant  professor  in  my 
department,  and  McKay,  my  best  student  at  Appleton,  who 
later  followed  me  to  Butler  and  then  on  to  Bloomington,  and 
of  whose  death  I  have  previously  written.  But  here  enters  for 
the  first  time  Joseph  Swain,  who  succeeded  Gilbert  in  my 
laboratory  —  though  as  instructor  only  —  when  the  latter 
went  to  the  University  of  Cincinnati.  Swain  was  a  young 
Quaker  giant,  six  feet  four  and  broad  in  porportion,  a  great 
athlete,  a  man  of  royal  good  nature,  who  entered  the  university 
as  freshman  the  year  I  came  as  professor  (1879).  Seeing  that 
he  showed  much  promise,  I  early  persuaded  him  to  work  for 
a  professorship  in  either  Biology  or  Mathematics.  As  a  matter 
of  fact,  he  specialized  in  both,  becoming  first  instructor  in  the 
one  and  then  in  the  other,  and  afterward  professor  of  Mathe- 
matics in  succession  to  Dr.  Kirkwood.  Of  his  subsequent 
career  I  shall  frequently  have  occasion  to  speak. 

Of  course,  not  all  those  who  did  advanced  work  with  me  in-  Not  all 
tended  to  become  professional  zoologists.      Bert   Fesler  once  zoologists 
said  that  he  got  his  best  training  for  the  law  from  a  study 
of  the  mackerel  tribe!    Other  ambitious  students  with  whom  I 
came  into  more  or  less  intimate  contact  were  Ellwood  P.  Cub- 
berley,  now  for  many  years  professor  of  Education  at  Stanford; 
Rufus  L.  Green,  who  succeeded  Swain  as  professor  of  Mathe- 
matics at  Indiana,  and  who  later  followed  him  to  Stanford; 

C  239] 


The  Days  of  a  Man  Ci88i 

William  A.  Millis,  now  president  of  Hanover  College;  James 
W.  Fesler,  now  president  of  the  Indiana  board  of  trustees; 
Homer  Dibell,  now  justice  of  the  Supreme  Court  of  Minnesota; 
Fletcher  B.  Dresslar,  professor  of  Education  in  different  uni- 
versities, East  and  West;  Henry  Landes,  my  brother-in-law, 
now  and  for  many  years  professor  of  Geology  at  the  State 
University  at  Seattle  and  state  geologist  of  Washington; 
David  K.  Goss,  afterward  principal  of  a  boys'  school  at  Strass- 
burg,  where  he  met  a  tragic  death;  and  David  A.  Curry,  a 
student  of  Greek,  who  followed  us  to  Stanford,  and  to  whose 
later  career  I  shall  shortly  refer. 

Amos  In  this  general  connection  I  must  mention  also  a  young 

Butler  naturalist  whose  relations  to  my  work,  though  not  in  the  labora- 
tory, were  often  very  close.  Amos  W.  Butler  I  came  to  know 
as  secretary  of  a  Natural  History  Society  at  Brookville,  a 
picturesque  village  where  a  number  of  young  men  were  en- 
thusiastically studying  the  animals  and  plants  of  the  neigh- 
borhood. From  this  interesting  beginning  arose  the  Indiana 
Academy  of  Sciences,  of  which  I  was  the  first  president.  Butler 
had  earlier  been  a  student  in  the  university  with  its  hard  and 
fast  classical  courses.  But  there  he  spent  so  much  more  time 
on  birds  than  on  Latin  that  he  was  debarred  from  graduation, 
though  he  later  became  the  leading  ornithologist  of  the  state. 
Many  years  afterward,  during  President  Bryan's  administra- 
tion, he  was  called  back  to  receive  his  degree,  fairly  earned 
according  to  the  new  dispensation.  More  recently  he  has  de- 
voted himself  to  human  biology  —  the  study  of  poverty, 
misery,  and  crime  —  becoming  secretary  of  the  Indiana  State 
Board  of  Charities. 

Sorting  During  the  Christmas  holidays  of  this  year,  I 
fishes  went  on  to  Washington  to  sort  out  the  contents  of 
the  many  tanks  of  fishes  Gilbert  and  I  had  forwarded 
to  the  Smithsonian  from  the  Pacific  Coast.  In  this 
matter  I  was  ably  assisted  by  Mr.  Pierre  L.  Jouy. 
After  taking  out  a  complete  series  for  retention  at 
the  Museum  and  one  of  duplicates  for  the  Univer- 
sity of  Indiana,  we  divided  the  rest  into  several 
sets  which  were  sent  to  the  leading  museums  of 
H  240  3 


* 

1882]     Exploration  of  the  Gulf  Coast 

the  world.  (This  work  was  the  first  to  be  done  in 
the  new  National  Museum  building,  just  then  opened, 
but  since  [1915]  replaced  by  one  far  larger  and  more 
commodious.)  Later,  as  a  literary  aftermath  of  our 
investigations  on  the  Columbia  and  a  sort  of  com- 
panion piece  to  my  "Story  of  a  Stone,"  I  wrote 
"The  Story  of  a  Salmon,"1  a  piece  of  simplified  "Story 
Natural  History  dealing  with  the  life  and  ways  of  °fa 
the  Chinook  Salmon.  This  has  been  reprinted  more 
frequently  than  anything  else  from  my  pen;  being 
readable  and  accurate,  it  perhaps  deserves  its  vogue. 


In  the  summer  of  1881  I  again  went  to  Europe, 
covering  much  the  same  ground  as  in  1879,  but  now 
adding  to  former  experiences  among  the  high  moun- 
tains an  ascent  of  the  Matterhorn.  Of  this  reckless 
adventure  a  somewhat  detailed  account  will  be 
found  in  the  following  chapter,  in  which  I  shall 
treat  of  all  my  early  European  trips  as  a  whole. 

In  the  spring  of  1882  I  made  a  collecting  trip  to  Along 
the  Gulf  Coast  from  Pensacola  to  Galveston.  Up  ^ 
to  that  time  all  my  investigations  in  the  South  had 
been  at  my  own  expense,  the  Fish  Commission 
furnishing  at  the  most  only  nets  and  alcohol.  On 
these  explorations  of  1882,  however,  and  all  similar 
later  ones  under  the  auspices  of  the  Commission, 
my  actual  expenses  and  those  of  my  scientific  as- 
sociates (but  nothing  more  other  than  the  slight 
exception  noted  below)  were  met  by  the  United 
States.  On  these  terms  I  was  able  to  command  the 
best  of  help.  If  salaries  had  been  paid,  the  hangers-on 

1  First  published  in  The  Popular  Science  Monthly  for  January,  1881. 

C 


The  Days  of  a  Man  £1882 

of  Congress  would  have  tried  to  monopolize  the 

positions,  thus   defeating  the   scientific   objects   in 

A  dollar   view.     In  1901,  however,  arranging  for  an  explora- 

aday       tjon  of  Hawaii,  Commissioner  George  M.   Bowers 

insisted  on  an  allowance  of  a  dollar  a  day  to  each 

man  to  cover  unavoidable  tips  and  general  wear 

and  tear  of  clothes,  a  system  since  continued  for 

most  such  expeditions. 

Pensacola  I  found  to  be  the  center  of  a  region  ex- 
tremely rich  in  fishes.  It  was  also  the  residence  of 
my  friend  Stearns,  who,  driven  from  his  native 
Maine  by  failing  health,  had  now  established  him- 
self in  town  with  a  wholesale  fishing  firm.  Stearns 
was  a  keen  and  competent  naturalist,  but  even  the 
soft  climate  of  Florida  failed  to  save  his  life. 

From  Pensacola  I  went  along  the  coast  through 
Ocean  Springs  and  Pass  Christian,  pleasant  seaside 
in  New    resorts  close  to  the  "piney  woods."    At  New  Orleans 
Orleans     j  would  have  liked  to  discover  something  of  the 
atmosphere  of  "Old   Creole   Days,"   so  graciously 
pictured  by  George  W.  Cable.     In  the  old  French 
Market  I  took  special  delight,  but  one  has  to  live 
in  the  city  long  enough  to  get  below  the  surface  in 
order  to  visualize  the  tragedy  of  "The  Grandissimes" 
or  to  meet  the  charming  "  Madame  Delicieuse." 
Broken         When  I   left  New  Orleans,  the  Mississippi  was 
levees       at  jts  height  and,  having  broken  through  the  levees, 
had  spread  out  in  an  ancient  channel,  the  Bayou 
Atchafalaya.      Here    and    there    house    gables    ap- 
peared rakishly  above  the  water,  and  in  most  places 
one  could  hardly  see  across  to  the  farther  shore. 

Similar  inundations  will  doubtless  occur  as  long 
as  present  conditions  exist,  for  the  continued  ex- 
tension of  barriers  along  its  sides  increasingly 

C  242  3 


In  Wyandotte  Cave 


narrows  the  bed  of  the  stream,  so  that  silt  accumu- 
lates, steadily  raising  the  water  level  and  thus  con- 
stantly augmenting  the  danger  from  floods.  And 
the  cutting  away  of  the  timber  on  the  great  Northern 
tributaries  —  the  Ohio,  Tennessee,  and  Cumber- 
land especially  —  aljows  the  water  from  spring 
rains  to  run  off  more  and  more  quickly,  swelling  the 
lower  reaches  of  the  Mississippi  and  adding  to  the 
troubles  of  the  delta  state  of  Louisiana.  Necessary 
readjustment  at  the  river's  mouth  must  ultimately 
become  a  national  problem. 

In  Lake  Pontchartrain,  a  large,  brackish  sheet  of  Varied 
water  near  New  Orleans,  I  found  a  curious  mixture  fauna 
of  sea  and  river  forms.     There  small  sharks  dis- 
puted with  channel  cats  over  the  garbage  thrown 
from   the   wharves.      In    surrounding   swamps   the 
bottoms  were    lined    with    rough   water   snakes  —  • 
Natrix    sipedon  —  hibernating    through    the    warm 
winter.    Not  far  away  I  saw  a  big  alligator  lashing 
the  bushes  but  getting  nowhere  ;   on  investigation  I 
discovered  that  he  was  tied  by  one  leg  to  a  tree  ! 

The  following  summer  I  had  a  curious  experience  A 
while  making  a  second  visit  to  Wyandotte  Cave  in 
the  neighborhood  of  Corydon,  Harrison  County,  In- 
diana. That  huge  cavern  in  the  limestone  rock 
extends  for  several  miles  and  has  never  yet  been 
explored  to  the  end.  Our  party  consisted  of  a  num- 
ber of  people  from  Indianapolis,  under  the  direction 
of  the  state  geologist,  Dr.  E.  T.  Cox.  After  penetrat- 
ing underground  for  about  three  miles,  we  started 
back  at  noon.  Being  somewhat  in  advance  of  the 
rest  of  the  party,  I  decided  to  try  a  little  experi- 
ment and  see  what  absolute  darkness  would  be  like. 

1:243  3 


The  Days  of  a  Man  £1882 

in  utter  I  therefore  sat  down  on  "the  Hippopotamus,"  a 
darkness  iarge  ciay  bank  in  an  open  chamber,  blew  out  my 
candle,  and  prepared  to  wait  for  the  rest  to  come  up. 
Meanwhile,  however,  it  was  very  dark  and  very 
quiet,  and  I  went  to  sleep,  awaking  just  as  the  last 
light  disappeared  around  a  bend. 

I  at  once  rushed  after  my  .friends,  but  very  soon 
discovered  that  without  light  or  sound  it  is  im- 
possible to  maintain  direction.  The  plan  often  sug- 
gested of  following  one  side  steadily  in  and  out  of 
the  passages  until  you  come  to  the  end  was  wholly 
impracticable,  for  I  was  upwards  of  three  miles  from 
the  entrance,  and  many  unexplored  side  chambers 
diverge  on  the  way.  So,  choosing  a  comparatively 
open  place,  I  felt  about  on  the  floor  until  I  found  the 
track  of  a  woman's  shoe,  which  indicated  that  the 
party  had  passed  that  spot,  and  the  direction  in 
which  they  had  gone.  I  then  determined  to  stay 
right  there  until  I  could  be  rescued.  It  was  damp 
and  cold  —  a  minor  matter  of  course,  when  one  is 
young  —  and  occasional  droppings  of  water  sounded 
unusually  loud,  not  having  to  compete  with  any- 
thing else. 

Rescue  As  the  others  knew  I  had  walked  on  ahead,  they 
naturally  thought  I  had  gone  out;  not  finding  me, 
however,  some  said  that  my  interest  in  Botany  had 
led  me  to  roam  about  for  a  while,  but  luncheon  or 
surely  dinner  would  bring  me  back  to  the  hotel. 
Fortunately  one  or  two  persons,  especially  Mr.  W.  W. 
Woollen,  a  business  man,  were  not  satisfied  with  this 
argument.  So  when  I  failed  to  come  in  for  the 
midday  meal,  he  insisted  on  sending  three  guides 
back  to  the  cave  with  food  and  brandy.  Along 
about  four  o'clock,  therefore,  I  heard  a  noise  and 

C  244  ] 


1882]  "Synopsis  of  Fishes  of  North  America'' 

soon  the  men  appeared.  The  flask  of  spirits  I  al- 
lowed them  to  divide  among  themselves,  but  the 
food  was  welcome. 

In  the  course  of  the  same  summer  President  Selim  University 
H.  Peabody  offered  me  the  professorship  of  Zoology  of 

!         TT    •  •  r    Tii-        •  •  t  TT  i  Illinois 

in  the  University  of  Illinois,  situated  at  Urbana. 
Nevertheless,  I  decided  to  remain  at  Bloomington, 
although  the  other  institution  was  larger  and  better 
equipped  than  the  University  of  Indiana.  But 
there  seemed  to  me  nothing  more  dreary  than  a 
prairie  town  in  the  month  of  August  when  the  roads 
were  lined  with  mayweed  and  the  streets  alternated 
between  flying  dust  and  bottomless  mud ;  for  in  those 
days  neither  asphalt  nor  concrete  had  been  thought 
of  for  highways.  The  chair  in  question  was  filled  by 
the  appointment  of  my  good  friend,  Dr.  Stephen 
A.  Forbes,  a  very  able  naturalist,  at  that  time  direc- 
tor of  the  Zoological  Laboratory  at  Normal,  Illinois. 

In  September  of  this  year  appeared  the  first  ex-  A  weighty 
tensive  memoir  by  Jordan  and  Gilbert,   "A  Syn-  work 
opsis  of  the  Fishes  of  North  America,"  this  being  also 
the  first  complete  and  coherent  account  of  the  forms 
of  which  it  treated.     Furthermore,  I  may  frankly 
say  that  it  played  a  large  part  in  the  history  of 
American  Ichthyology,  paving  the  way,  however,  for 
its  own  replacement  (in  1896)  by  the  much  more 
extended  treatise,  "The  Fishes  of  North  and  Middle 
America,"  of  Jordan  and  Evermann. 

3 

In  the  spring  of  1883  I  made  an  interesting  ex- 
cursion to  the  South  in  the  name  of  Geology.  It 
was  then  the  custom  for  Western  colleges  to  grant 


The  Days  of  a  Man  £1883 

the  senior  class  a  vacation  of  three  weeks  at  the  end 
of  the  academic  year,  in  order  that  they  might  pre- 
pare their  graduating  orations.  For  the  tradition 
that  each  member  should  discuss  some  public 
question  on  receiving  his  degree  died  slowly;  it 
had,  moreover,  a  certain  practical  value  in  bringing 
the  families  and  friends  of  -the  young  orators  to 
.Commencement.  And  when  the  larger  number  of 
graduates  made  it  impossible  for  all  to  appear,  six 
or  eight  were  chosen,  usually  according  to  merit  of 
one  kind  or  another,  though  sometimes  by  lot. 
Afterward  a  distinguished  speaker  from  the  out- 
side divided  the  time  with  a  few  senior  orators,  or 
(later  still)  with  the  president,  who  gave  the  class  a 
farewell  word  of  advice. 

rhf  senior  As  the  eighteen  members  of  the  class  of  '83  were 
tramp  ajj  students  of  mine  in  Geology,  we  arranged  to 
utilize  the  special  vacation  for  a  geological  tramp 
across  southeastern  Kentucky  from  Rock  Castle 
River  to  Cumberland  Falls  and  Cumberland  Gap, 
returning  by  way  of  Mammoth  Cave  —  a  total  dis- 
tance of  two  hundred  miles  across  a  region  wonder- 
fully picturesque,  through  noble  forests  intersected 
by  sparkling  streams,  and  all  instructive  from  every 
point  of  view. 

Mountain  Not  the  least  element  of  interest  lay  in  the  moun- 
f°lk  tain  folk  themselves.  Simple,  unlettered,  poor  but 
hospitable,  they  gave  us  whatever  they  could,  though 
often  our  whole  company,  the  men  at  least,  had  to 
sleep  on  the  ground  or  on  the  floor  of  barn  or  porch. 
Corn  bread,  bacon,  eggs,  and  milk  were  the  only 
foods  on  which  we  could  regularly  count,  with  oc- 
casionally a  chicken  or  "a  mess  of  saleratus  (soda) 
C  246  3 


1883]    Two  Hundred  Miles  of  Kentucky 

biscuit."  Their  bread  they  "used  to  raise"  by  the 
elaborate  process  known  as  "salt  rising,"  but  they 
had  "mostly  got  out  of  the  habit"  and  so  baked 
"quick"  breads  raised  by  soda  and  sour  milk 
and  shortened  with  lard,  an  American  practice  too 
common  among  our  pioneers.  When  coffee  was  to 
be  had,  they  provided  "long  sweetening";  namely, 
sorghum  molasses. 

These  people  are  still  essentially  English  peasants 
shut  away  for  centuries  from  the  main  currents  of 
American  affairs.  At  the  time  of  our  visit  feuds 
similar  to  the  Italian  Vendetta  were  prevalent  in 
southeastern  Kentucky,  and  "Redmond,  the  Out-  "Redmond, 
law,"  a  daring  "moonshiner,"  was  the  popular  ^  „ 
hero.  "Moonshine"  is  whisky  distilled  by  night  in 
caves  or  "lonesome  coves";  the  high  excise  tax 
levied  by  the  government  on  alcohol  openly  manu- 
factured made  "moonshining"  profitable,  and  ex- 
tirpation of  the  industry  cost  much  money  and 
some  lives.  For  the  mountaineers  could  never  un- 
derstand why  "they  couldn't  be  let  to  make  a  little 
good  whisky  out  of  their  own  corn." 

The  physical  and  mental  apathy  so  character- 
istic of  that  folk  we  now  know  to  be  largely  due 
to  the  diffusion  of  the  hookworm  —  Uncinaria. 
Indeed,  the  sad  plight  of  many  of  the  factory  chil- 
dren of  the  South  is  caused  by  Uncinaria  rather  than 
by  overwork,  though  both  are  abominable.  Re- 
cently the  researches  of  Dr.  Charles  W.  Stiles  and  Stiies's 
his  associates  have  made  the  nature  of  this  pest  a  researcbes 
matter  of  general  information,  and  have  brought  to 
light  a  simple  remedy  for  apathy  and  anemia,  the 
special  ills  of  the  "poor  whites"  —  that  is,  the  use  of 
aromatic  oils,  of  which  thymol  is  the  most  efficacious. 

C  247  3 


The  Days  of  a  Man  £1883 

indigent        But    Unciuaria   does   not   tell   the   whole   story; 

strains  heredity  too  plays  its  part.  Many  indigent  strains 
in  our  Southern  mountains  go  back  to  English 
prisoners  of  debt  unloaded  at  Jamestown,  Virginia, 
in  the  seventeenth  century;  among  these  were  a 
considerable  number  of  persons  not  fitted  for  suc- 
cessful living  anywhere.  Yet  it  must  be  admitted 
that  lack  of  education  and  want  of  vocational  train- 
ing are  large  factors  in  the  social  problem  presented 
by  the  "poor  whites,"  for  in  many  of  them  flows 
the  "blue  blood"  of  England.  And  of  course  not 
all  those  banished  by  British  "justice"  in  the  days 
of  the  Stuarts  were  either  debtors,  paupers,  or 
criminals.  Some  had  won  the  disfavor  of  county 
squires  by  acts  of  poaching,  or  by  independence  of 
character.  In  the  New  World,  however,  most  in- 
dividuals of  this  type  found  means  of  self-extrication. 
Into  the  mountains  the  negroes  rarely  penetrate. 
As  a  general  rule,  also,  Kentucky  hill  people  are 
too  poor  ever  to  have  owned  slaves;  thus  for 
generations  the  "valley  folk"  have  been  their  tradi- 

folk  tional  enemies.  This  fact  appeared  especially  when 
sheriffs  from  the  lowland  attempted  to  suppress 
"moonshining,"  or  when  they  tried  to  interfere  in 
a  mountain  feud,  a  kind  of  sport  limited  only  by 
its  own  rigid  etiquette. 

A  record  of  our  tramp  was  written  by  Clarence 
L.  Goodwin,  one  of  the  boys.  From  it  I  may  be  al- 
lowed to  quote  the  following,  in  spite  of  its  very 
complimentary  reference  to  myself,  because  of  the 
light  it  throws  on  a  phase  of  my  success  as  a  teacher: 

To  most  of  us  it  gave  a  heartier  appreciation  of  our  leader. 

He  led  the  charge  on  the  milk  houses  and  was  always  in 

front.    He  took  his  turn  with  the  others,  and  was  not  too  high- 

C  248  3 


w 


- 


z  § 

D   "2 

O 


«  g 

^  a 


1883]  Third  Trip  to  TLurope 

toned  to  go  in  swimming  with  them.  But  it  was  refreshing  to 
be  with  a  professor  who  could  afford  to  dispense  with  dignity, 
who  could  adapt  himself  to  us  in  any  circumstances.  He  was 
at  once  our  teacher,  companion,  and  friend.  Inwoven  with 
the  memories  of  this  trip  will  ever  remain  his  sympathy  for  us, 
his  infinite  patience,  and  his  knowledge  to  which  we  never 
applied  in  vain. 

[In  June  of  this  present  year  (1920),  at  the  Cen- 
tennial celebration  of  Indiana  University,  six  of 
the  twelve  living  members  of  the  class  of  '83  met 
for  a  memorial  breakfast  at  the  fine  Bloomington 
home  of  Ben  F.  Adams,  one  of  their  number,  the 
others  being  Juliet  Maxwell,  Minta  Sims,  Joseph 
Swain,  Goodwin,  and  Edwin  Corr.  At  this  reunion 
I  was  the  welcome  guest,  and  old  experiences  were 
there  enthusiastically  rehearsed.] 

When  college  closed,  I  went  abroad  again,  tak- 
ing Swain  and  Curry  as  helpers  —  an  arrangement 
which  gave  me  considerable  freedom  for  museum 
study,  and  which  started  Curry  on  his  later  career 
as  camp  manager  in  the  Yellowstone  Park  and 
Yosemite  Valley.  In  this  he  was  very  successful, 
No  one,  moreover,  who  visited  the  famous  "Camp  °fthf  . 

~  »»        i  «i       •  MI  i         i  •        i»          •  Yosemite 

Curry  while  it  was  still  under  his  direction  can 
ever  forget  his  commanding  presence  and  majestic 
voice,  which  at  the  rising  hour  reverberated  through 
the  valley,  earning  him  the  unique  title  of  "Stentor 
of  the  Yosemite."  He  died  in  1917.  His  widow, 
who  (as  Jennie  Foster)  was  likewise  a  member  of 
the  geological  party  of  1883,  and  their  son  Foster 
now  manage  the  camp,  undoubtedly  the  largest 
mountain  caravansary  in  existence. 


C  249  3 


CHAPTER   ELEVEN 


Tramps      FOLLOWING  in  some  degree  the  plan  of  our  outings 
abroad       'm  the  South,  already  described,  I  made  in  1879, 
1 88 1,  and  1883,  summer  excursions  to  Europe  with 
groups  of  students. 

Traveling  as  economically  as  possible,  and  living 
in  third-class  hotels,  we  indeed  saw  what  my  pros- 
pectus promised,  "something  of  the  real  life  of  the 
people/'  A  practicable  type  of  bicycle  having  not 
yet  been  invented,  and  carriages  being  costly,  we 
went  largely  on  foot.  We  thus  roamed  over  Holland, 
Belgium,  and  France,  and  sought  out  picturesque 
walks  in  Germany,  like  the  one  from  Drachenfels 
and  Rolandseck  by  way  of  Oberwesel  to  St.  Goar. 
At  one  time  or  another,  also,  we  crossed  nearly  all 
the  Swiss  mountain  passes,  high  and  low.  We 
climbed  the  Breithorn,  Alphiibel,  Monte  Moro,  Piz 
Languard,  and  Piz  Corvatsch;  and  finally,  in  1881, 
some  of  us  attacked  the  Matterhorn.  In  1881 
Gilbert,  Anderson,  and  William  W.  Spangler,  a 
student,  went  as  assistants,  partly  that  I  might  have 
freedom  to  work  in  Natural  History.  In  1883,  for 
the  same  reason,  I  had  the  help  of  Swain  and  Curry. 
Swiss  From  the  Swiss  Alps  we  always  walked  down  to 

Italy,  not  only  by  way  of  the  conventional  Spliigen, 
Simplon,  St.  Gotthard,  and  Maloja  passes,  but  also 
in  wilder  ways.  Twice  we  tramped  over  the  snowy 
Gries  past  the  noble  Tosa  Fall  to  Domo  d'Ossola,  and 
once  across  from  Saas-im-Grund  over  the  Monte 
Moro  by  the  side  of  Monte  Rosa  to  Macugnaga 

C  250  3 


mountain 
passes 


1912]          To  Anderson  in  Florence 

in  the  valley  of  the  Po.  But  I  shall  not  here  in  Italy 
attempt  to  recount  our  impressions,  common  to 
all  enthusiastic  travelers,  of  the  cities  of  Italy: 
the  charms  of  Florence  and  Verona,  and  the  many 
smaller  towns;  the  majesty  of  Rome;  the  scenic 
joys  of  Naples;  the  rare  interest  of  Pompeii,  and  of 
Vesuvius,  which  we  climbed  at  midnight  while  a 
mild  eruption  was  going  on;  the  delights  of  Capri, 
Sorrento,  and  Castellamare.  Nor  need  I  speak  of 
Venice  (which  I  have  visited  several  times  since) 
where  the  Rialto  market  furnished  one  of  my  finest 
collections  of  fishes.  For  every  writer  with  eyes 
and  soul  has  caught  the  glow  of  some  part  of  Italy, 
and  at  the  best  I  could  only  trail  behind  in  the  rear 
of  a  long  procession. 

But  in  view  of  my  generous  self-restraint  I  may 
perhaps  be  pardoned  for  reprinting  a  bit  of  verse 
on  Florence,  written  just  thirty  years  after  my  stay 
near  the  old,  old  bridge  of  Taddeo  Gaddi,  lovingly 
called  in  "soft  bastard  Latin"  //  Ponte  Fecchio. 

To  MELVILLE  BEST  ANDERSON  1 


Good  friend,  your  message  comes  to  me 

Far-tost  across  a  winter's  sea, 

And  once  again,  as  in  a  dream, 

In  your  Etrucsan  town  I  seem. 

Once  more  in  sunset's  reddening  haze 

San  Miniato's  spire's  ablaze. 

The  last  long  rays  slow  fade  away 

On  thy  gray  hills,  Fiesole! 

Once  more  across  these  thirty  years, 

Rich  with  their  shimmering  hopes  and  fears, 

1  Then  (1912)  resident  in  Florence.    Written  in  answer  to  his  poem,  La  Cap- 
poncina,  an  appreciation  of  the  city. 

n  251  3 


The  Days  of  a  Man  [[1912 

Beyond  our  Santa  Clara's  dales 
I  see  your  Arno's  winding  vales, 
Gorged  with  the  laurel-green  and  pine, 
Slip  from  the  "wind-grieved  Apennine." 
While  still  upon  my  garden  wall 
Thick  leaves  of  Vallombrosa  fall. 

n 

O  regal  city  of  the  flowers! 
What  glory  thine!   What  fortune  ours! 
Thou  wert  the  home  of  deeds  divine, 
The  chosen  of  the  ages  thine. 
Thine,  austere  poets  who  could  tell 
The  inmost  truths  of  Heaven  and  Hell. 
Thy  grim  old  sophist  pulled  the  strings 
That  shift  the  destinies  of  kings. 
Thine,  artists  who  on  canvas  wrought 
The  fairest  forms  that  men  have  sought. 
Thine,  Cimabue's  first  approach, 
Thine,  Raphael  with  the  silken  touch, 
Thine,  sweet  girl-faces  that  we  know  — 
The  loves  of  Fra  Angelico. 
Thine,  Vinci,  humanest  of  men, 
His  like  no  world  shall  see  again. 
Sculptors  and  painters  come  and  go, 
And  still  supreme  thine  Angelo! 
Thine  those  who,  mastering  lands  and  times, 
Wrote  deathless  themes  in  jagged  rhymes. 
Here  in  thy  Duomo  unafraid 
Thy  great  evangelist  has  prayed. 
There  is  no  gift  time  can  bestow 
That  thou,  O  Florence,  dost  not  know! 

in 

Lorenzo's  city,  can  it  be 
Thou  livest  but  in  history? 
Are  all  the  glories  of  thy  race 
Dissolved  in  sordid  commonplace? 
Seek'st  thou  on  an  unfriendly  shore 
The  petty  pillage  of  the  Moor? 

C  252  3 


1912]  Appeal  to  Florence 

O  Florence!    thou  shalt  rise  again, 
Thy  deeds  once  more  be  deeds  of  men! 
Such  real  men  the  ages  know 
Crowded  thy  Ponte  Vecchio  — 
Not  stage-struck  singers  of  the  day 
With  "endless  dirges  to  decay." 
Even  thy  Ghibelline  and  Guelph 
Lusted  for  power  and  not  for  pelf. 

IV 

Can  Time's  revenges  farther  go! 

From  Dante  to  D'Annunzio! 

By  poesy  —  O  wondrous  trade  — 

Camp  braggarts  into  heroes  made! 

Such  "thin  red  lines  of  heroes"  flow 

Where  once  trod  Fra  Girolamo! 

What  loftiest  cause  has  fallen  lower, 

Down  to  Giolitti  from  Cavour? 

To  what  base  uses  may  we  come 

Catspawing  to  the  Bank  of  Rome! 

To  turn  away  from  storied  lands 

To  wallow  in  the  desert  sands 

And  filch  from  sword-gashed  Arabs,  then, 

The  plunder  of  the  Saracen! 


No,  Florence,  no,  this  shall  not  be! 

By  thy  majestic  history, 

By  all  thy  lives  of  ancient  worth, 

By  all  the  fairest  forms  on  earth, 

By  all  the  memories  we  bear, 

By  Casa  Guidi's  casements  rare, 

By  all  that  calls  men's  souls  to  thee 

O'er  snow-dashed  Alp  or  storm-swept  sea! 

Thine  was  the  spirit  once  which  broke 

Age-long  obsession,  which  awoke 

Old  warring  Europe  from  its  strife 

To  thoughts  of  art,  to  acts  of  life. 

Let  "Africa's  dried  leaf"  remain; 

To  thine  own  self  come  back  again! 

C  253  3 


The  Days  of  a  Man  £1883 


In  1883  we  visited  Norway  also,  admiring  greatly 
its  noble  waterfalls  and  mountain  lakes,  delighting 
as  well'  in  the  wholesome  Northern  people  and  the 
intimate  ways  of  travel  by  Stolkjaerre  and  pony 
from  station  to  station. 

In  Bergen  we  engaged  a  small  steamer  to  take  us 
up  to  Odde  at  the  head  of  the  Hardanger  fjord. 
At  Nord-  There  we  had  expected  to  spend  the  night  at  Nord- 
hjemsund  in  Nils  Sandven's  Inn,  a  little  "starred'' 
hostelry;  but  arriving  at  10  P.M.  —  still  bright  day- 
light in  the  long  twilight  of  the  North  —  we  found 
the  place  closed,  and  called  lustily  for  the  landlord. 
Awakened  at  last  by  our  outcry,  he  thrust  his 
head  from  the  window,  saying,  "Ikke  Senge;  ikke 
Plats"  —  "No  bed;  no  place."  Meanwhile,  how- 
ever, the  aroused  villagers  had  become  interested. 
The  schoolmaster  therefore  proposed  to  take  us 
three  miles  up  the  mountain  to  the  Oeftshusfos  — 
"Falls  of  the  Uppermost  House"  —  a  cascade  "be- 
hind which  we  could  walk  dry-shod."  This  offer 
we  sleepily  declined.  Finally  some  one  suggested 
that  as  they  were  all  up  and  couldn't  rest  much 
longer  anyhow,  each  should  turn  over  his  place  for 
the  rest  of  the  night  to  one  of  the  party.  We  thus 
made  acquaintance  with  the  Norwegian  peasant  bed, 
a  wooden  box  holding  a  deep  layer  of  hay  and  two 
or  three  blankets,  the  whole  usually  beset  with 
fleas.  Underneath,  the  family  stores  its  winter 
supply  of  Fladbrod  —  great,  thin,  circular  pancakes 
of  rye  folded  while  still  warm  into  triangles  —  dry 
eating  at  any  time.  But  there  is  always  an  abun- 

1:254:1 


1883]  In  Norway 


dance  of  good  milk,  butter,  cream,  and   cheese  — 
Gammelost,    a    bitter   goat's-cheese   of  strong   odor 
being   prevalent.      Best    of  all   Norwegian    dishes,  " 
however,   is  the   Rodgrod   (red  grits)   of  barley  or  Fl'6d*" 
oatmeal  into  which  an  abundance  of  berries  (prefer-    ays 
ably   blueberries)    has   been   stirred;    treated   with 
solid  clots  of  cream,  this  makes  a  delicious  dish. 
Fine  trout   and   salmon,  moreover,   abound   in  all 
Northern  rivers. 

In  every  Norwegian  village  one  is  sure  to  find  two 
men  of  culture,  usually  with  a  clear  and  wholesome 
outlook  on  the  world.  These  are  Praesten,  the 
pastor,  and  Skolemesteren,  the  teacher.  One  of  my 
pleasantest  recollections  is  that  of  a  short  stay  at 
the  Praestegaard — parsonage — at  Jamsgaard  i  Vinje, 
midway  in  the  uplands  between  Hardanger  and 
Christianiafjord.  At  Jamsgaard  we  were  entertained 
by  Praesten,  whose  calm-eyed  wife  and  charming 
daughters  gave  us  a  brief  inlook  on  cultured  Norway. 

No  European  stock  presents  stronger  human  ma-  A  sturdy 
terial  than  the  Norwegian,  and  general  familiarity  race 
with  the  best  that  has  been  written  in  their  own 
tongue  must  be  accounted  a  large  factor  in  national 
culture.     For  the  Danish-Norwegian  language  itself 
I  have  great  respect.    As  resonant  as  the  German, 
it  has  escaped  the  general  Teutonic  clumsiness  and 
especially  the  senseless  declension  of  article  and  ad- 
jective which  is  such  a  burden  on  German  syntax, 
leading  Darwin  to  speak  of  it  as  "yer'dammt" 
accent  on  the  first  syllable,  all  pronounced  in  true 
English  style! 

While  in  Skjaeggedal  —  "Shaggy-dale"  —  I  met  /« 
a  young  Norseman  born  in  that  wonderful  wilder-  SkJae&&edal 
ness  of  water  and  rocks.     Once  he  had  lived  for  a 

£255:1 


The  Days  of  a  Man  [1883 

time  in  North  Dakota,  but  in  a  level  country  of  rich 
farms  he  couldn't  thrive  —  "Jeg  konnte  ikke  trives 
der"  —  and  so  returned  to  his  birthplace.  In  the 
little  school  I  was  much  pleased  to  hear  the  children 
sing  the  various  national  songs  of  Norway  —  some 
of  which  rank  with  the  finest  and  most  spirited  of 
any  race.  Among  them  were  Bjornson's 

Ja  vi  elsker  dette  Landet 
and  G.  C.  Wolff's 

Hvor  herligt  er  mit  Fodeland 
Det  havomkranste  gamle  Norge! 

Along  the  Norwegian  fjords  each  farm  stands  at 
the  head  or  foot  of  a  lake,  while  nowhere  on  the  road 
does  one  get  away  from  the  sound  of  waterfalls. 
The  Skjaeggedalsfos,  plunging  directly  into  a  moun- 
tain lake,  and  the  wild  Rjukanfos  into  a  deep  abyss, 
Wreck  of    were  the  most  remarkable  of  these  cataracts.    I  say 
Norway's    were    because  my  friend,  Conrad  Mohr  of  Bergen, 

waterfalls      r  .  r  m   •  11          11  t  11        c 

formerly  owner  of  bkjaeggedal,  tells  me  that  all  of 
the  high  falls  —  the  Voringfos  alone  excepted  — 
have  been  taken  up  and  scenically  ruined  by  Ger- 
man electric-power  companies. 

The  In  1883  also,  returning  from  Italy,  a  few  of  us 

octroi  at  spent  a  week  among  the  picturesque  extinct  vol- 
canoes of  Auvergne  in  the  heart  of  France.  At  the 
town  of  Issoire  (Iciodorum  of  the  ancient  Romans) 
I  passed  an  afternoon  watching  the  operations  of 
the  octroi  outside  the  city  walls.  By  the  gate  stood 
a  little  shed  where  two  or  three  soldiers  in  red 
coats  with  blue  facings  protected  the  industries  of 
the  town.  Wheelbarrow  loads  of  turnips,  baskets  of 
onions  or  artichokes,  eggs,  sheep,  chickens  —  all 

C  256  3 


.    j^OHk^ 
RJUKANFOS,  THELEMARK,  NORWAY 


1883]  The  Fate  of  Iciodorum 

these  paid  their  toll  to  the  treasury  as  they  went 
through  the  gate.  A  sou  let  in  five  cabbage  heads 
or  ten  onions,  twelve  turnips,  eight  apples,  or  three 
bunches  of  artichokes;  other  things  being  taxed 
in  proportion,  the  revenues  needed  to  run  the  city 
were  thus  collected  from  the  farmer  folk  of  neigh- 
boring districts.  The  octroi  accordingly  serves  as  a 
sort  of  protective  tariff  on  a  small  scale,  whereby 
French  and  Italian  towns  generally  attempt  to 
throw  municipal  expenses  on  outsiders.  Direct 
taxation  of  citizens  is  a  barren  expedient,  and  all 
great  financiers  from  Caesar  to  Napoleon  gathered 
in  from  foreigners  what  money  they  needed. 

I  made  some  notes,  satirical,  I  fear,  on  the  opera-  A  satire 
tion  of  the  octroi.  Five  years  later  my  wife  Jessie  in 
urged  me  to  work  them  up  for  the  edification  of  my  * 
fellow  citizens.  Under  the  title,  therefore,  of  "The 
Octroi  at  Issoire"  this  system  was  discussed  by  me  in 
The  Popular  Science  Monthly  for  1888,  the  article 
appearing  later  in  book  form  as  "The  Fate  of 
Iciodorum."  My  satire  took  the  guise  of  a  parable 
likening  tariff-protected  America  to  Issoire,  while 
Clermont,  metropolis  of  the  department  of  Puy-de- 
Dome  in  Auvergne,  is  to  be  identified  as  England. 
Two  general  lessons  were  drawn:  first,  that  history 
repeats  itself  if  it  be  real  history  —  that  is,  made 
up  of  causes  and  effects,  not  merely  a  succession  of 
unrelated  incidents;  second,  that  national  wealth 
is  enhanced  by  taking  money  from  the  poor  who 
waste  it  (which  is  why  they  are  poor)  and  putting 
it  into  the  hands  of  the  rich  and  powerful  who  know 
how  to  make  it  grow. 

This  is  a  truism  so  obvious  that  one  is  astonished  to  hear 
it  questioned,  although  some  maintain  that  the  first  purpose 

C  257  3 


The  Days  of  a  Man 


of  state  or  city  is  not  to  make  money,  nor  help  anybody  make 
money,  but  to  see  that  all  have  a  fair  chance.  If,  however,  the 
state  be  rich  as  a  whole,  what  matter  if  the  people  be  mostly 
poor?  For  the  luster  of  wealth  is  reflected  from  the  faces  of 
all.  It  creates,  as  it  were,  an  atmosphere  of  affluence,  and 
where  affluence  is  the  other  charms  of  life  soon  gather. 

In  an  appreciative  review  the  Manchester  Guar- 
dian,  fearing  that  all  this  raillery  might  be  taken 
literally,  observed: 

Sad  experience  shows  that  the  ironic  method  needs,  in  our 
grave  and  literal  country,  to  be  marked  in  very  plain  letters. 

Prophecy  The  reception  in  1897  of  "The  Sympsychograph,"  l 
fulfilled  another  bit  of  purposeful  fooling  on  my  part,  at- 
tests the  truth  of  this  remark.  But  it  is  also  worth 
noting  that  the  imaginary  events  —  surplus,  defi- 
cits, trusts,  strikes,  rebates,  ground  floors,  lockouts, 
and  freeze-outs  —  related  of  Issoire  actually  oc- 
curred in  the  United  States  as  features  of  forced 
industrial  prosperity,  after  the  original  article  was 
written.  Such  events  I  attributed  to 

the  improvidence  of  the  workingman  forestalling  the  pros- 
perity sure  to  be  his  in  time,  but  which  normally  filters  to  him 
through  overflow  from  the  hands  of  others. 


Of  all  our  adventures  on  the  road,  the  most  mem- 
orable was  an  ascent  of  the  Matterhorn2  on  August 
10,  1 88 1 — an  experience  which  I  permit  myself  to 

1  See  Chapter  xxm,  page  599. 

2  Among  the  good  books  dealing  with  the  Matterhorn  (in  French,  Mont 
Cervin)  are:    "Scrambles  among  the  Alps"  by  Edward  Whymper,  "Hours 
of  Exercise  in  the  Alps"  by  John  Tyndall,  "My  Climbs  in  the  Alps  and  Cau- 
casus" by  A.  F.  Mommery,  and  (especially)  "The  Matterhorn"  by  Guido 
Rey. 

n  258  3 


18813         Ascent  of  the  Matterhorn 

relate  in  partial  detail,  necessarily  borrowing  for 
the  purpose  from  an  old-time  talk  which  to  some  of 
my  readers  may  be  painfully  familiar. 

Returning  from  Florence  by  way  of  Aosta,  we  A  huge 
had  walked  over  the  snowy  desolation  of  the  Mat-  py™mid 
terjoch  or  Col  de  Saint  Theodule  from  Val  Tour- 
nanche  to  Zermatt.  And  ever  before  us  as  we 
mounted  the  green  valley,  above  us  as  we  toiled  up 
the  pass,  above  us  everywhere  —  dark,  majestic, 
inaccessible  —  rose  the  huge  pyramid  of  the  grand- 
est of  the  Alps,  its  long  hand  clutching  at  the  sky. 
The  Matterhorn  burns  itself  into  the  memory  as 
nothing  else  in  all  Europe  does.  Three  of  its  neigh- 
bors, Monte  Rosa,  the  Weisshorn,  and  the  Micha- 
belhorn  or  Dom,  as  well  as  Mont  Blanc,  are  indeed  a 
little  higher,  but  no  other  peak  in  the  world  makes 
such  good  use  of  its  height.  Most  great  mountains 
have  white  rounded  heads,  their  harsher  angles 
worn  away  by  the  long  action  of  glaciers.  The 
Matterhorn,  however,  is  too  steep  for  snow  to 
cling  to  and  no  glacier  has  ever  rounded  its  angles. 
It  is  therefore  a  creature  of  sun  and  frost,  the  wreck 
or  relic  of  some  ancient  giant  from  which  the  strong 
gods  of  heat  and  cold  have  hurled  down  their  ava- 
lanches of  loosened  rocks. 

We  had  wandered  about  Zermatt  for  a  few  days,  Gilbert's 
and  all  the  while  the  mountain  hung  above  our  dare 
heads  and  dared  us  to  come.    And  so  one  evening 
as  we  watched  the  moon  slip  behind  its  towering 
obelisk,  Gilbert  said  to  Beach:  "We  must  do  some- 
thing big  before  we  leave  this  place.     Let's  go  up 
the  Matterhorn!"    And  Beach  replied:  "All  right, 
I'll  go  if  Jordan  will." 

But  Jordan  held  back,  knowing  that  it  would  be 

C  2593 


The  Days  of  a  Man 


a  hard  road  for  a  heavy  man  to  travel.  Besides,  the 
tragedy  of  the  first  climbers  was  fresh  in  his  mind. 
Then  Gilbert  said:  "You  have  talked  and  talked 
about  mountains,  but  you  have  never  done  a  single 
big  thing  among  them,  and  now  it's  time  you  did!" 
I  remembered,  moreover,  that  several  earnest  scien- 
tists had  attempted  to  make  the  ascent.  Tyndall, 
for  instance*  had  thought  it  worth  while  to  try 
again  and  again,  year  after  year;  and  so  had  my 
Italian  namesake,  the  geologist  Giordano.  So  at 
John  the  last  I  fell  into  line,  and  seeking  out  "John  the 
Baptist  Baptist"  —  Jean  Baptiste  Aymonod  —  who  had 
led  us  from  Val  Tournanche,  engaged  him  as  chief 
guide,  and  arranged  to  get  off  before  morning. 
We  then  strolled  pensively  through  the  little  grave- 
yard to  the  tombs  of  Hadow,  Hudson,  and  Michel 
Croz,  the  unfortunate  associates  of  Edward  Whymper 
on  the  first  ascent  in  1865. 

The  party  as  finally  made  up  consisted  of  Ander- 
son, Gilbert,  Spangler,  William  E.  Beach  (also  a 
student  from  Indiana  University),  Walter  O.  Williams 
of  Indianapolis,  and  myself.  Our  guides  were  five 
in  number  —  "John  the  Baptist,"  a  young  man  of 
remarkable  strength,  skill,  and  loyalty,  afterward 
well  known  and  appreciated  in  the  Pennine  Alps, 
yictor  Macquignaz,  Francois  Bic,  Daniel  Bic,  and 
Elie  Pession  —  all  from  Val  Tournanche,  a  French 
colony  within  the  confines  of  Italy. 

starting         When  we  started  out  shortly  after  midnight,  the 
out  moon  was  full  and  hung  gracefully  over  the  south 

shoulder  of  the  mountain,  and  the  sky  was  without 
a  cloud.  Up  through  dark  fir  forests  we  went,  by 
the  side  of  a  foaming  torrent,  then  over  flower- 
carpeted  pastures  and  steep  grassy  slopes  dominated 

C  2603 


i88i]         Ascent  of  the  Matter  horn 

by  the  great  pyramidal  mass,  the  glistening  snows 
of  the  Dent  Blanche  and  the  Breithorn  flanking  it 
on  either  side.  At  sunrise  we  reached  the  cabin,  a 
fairly  comfortable  shed  at  the  foot  of  the  peak  it- 
self. Within,  the  walls  bear  inscriptions  in  many 
tongues.  One  reads  as  follows: 

Little  Matt  Horner 

Sat  in  the  corner, 
And  vowed  he  would  not  be  climbed; 

We  tried  it,  you  know, 

But  found  so  much  snow 
We  very  politely  declined. 

After  a  brief  rest  we  now  set  out  on  a  long  and  rhe  Berg- 
most  trying  climb,  the  many  details  of  which  I  scbrund 
need  not  here  repeat.  But  far  below  us,  even  from 
the  very  start,  yawned  the  deep  abyss  of  the  "  Berg- 
schrund,"  a  chasm  produced  by  the  slipping  away 
of  the  Furggen  Glacier  from  the  mountain.  Tied 
together  in  three  groups,  about  ten  feet  apart,  we 
moved  only  one  at  a  time  in  each  group  and  not 
at  all  until  the  preceding  man  had  secured  a  good 
foothold,  the  constant  question  of  the  guides  being 
"files  vous  bien  place?"  —  "Are  you  well  fixed?" 
For  not  to  be  so  even  for  a  moment  was  a  menace 
to  one's  associates. 

The  steepest  pitch  of  the  whole  ascent  is  just 
below  the  tiny  refuge  hut  near  the  shoulder,  which 
I  describe  later  on.    Down  the  face  of  that  seventy-  Dangling 
foot  precipice  dangled  a  rope  made  fast  to  an  iron  ropes 
staple  above,  but  swinging  loosely  below  so  that 
one  could  climb  hand  over  hand  by  resting  his  toes 
on  projecting  irregularities  of  the  mountain  side. 
That  ropes  were  placed  in  difficult  stretches  along 
the  way  we  already  knew;  still  we  had  hardly  ex- 

261 


The  Days  of  a  Man  Ci88i 

pected  to  be  suspended  over  infinity!  John  as  usual 
went  up  ahead  as  far  as  his  tether  permitted,  then 
called  to  me  to  follow.  The  rope  was  white  with 
frost  and  I  thought  that  I  could  manage  better  with 
gloves.  This  was  a  mistake,  for  when  I  had  to 
trust  my  full  weight  I  felt  myself  slipping  down- 
ward, at  first  slowly,  then  more  swiftly.  It  was 
not  a  pleasant  sensation,  though  I  hoped  to  stop 
when  I  reached  the  knot  at  the  end  of  the  rope; 
otherwise  we  might  all  form  the  nucleus  of  a  rock 
avalanche  moving  toward  Zermatt.  The  knot  held, 
however,  and  gloves  off,  I  tried  again,  this  time  with 
better  luck,  after  which  the  others  followed  suc- 
cessfully. 

After  a  few  moments'  rest  in  the  hut  we  next 
passed  up  and  along  the  sharp  arete  or  angular  edge 
of  the  mountain,  thereby  avoiding  the  risk  of  falling 
stones.  This  at  one  place  became  exceedingly 
narrow,  and  on  the  north  side,  as  we  inched  along, 
we  looked  down  a  precipice  of  four  thousand  feet 
to  the  Tiefenmatten  Glacier.  From  a  cliff  not  far 
above  us  at  that  point,  Whymper's  companions  fell 
tne  whole  distance  to  their  death.  I  asked  John 
about  it,  but  he  would  not  talk.  "I  was  not  there," 
he  said. 

Clouds  now  gathered  suddenly,  enveloping  us  in 
a  gusty  snowstorm  and  drenching  the  valley  with 
rain.  We  lost  sight  of  the  earth  altogether;  every- 
thing below  was  a  fathomless  abyss.  As  we  turned 
along  the  more  level  shoulder  toward  the  east  face, 
Aymonod  called  my  attention  to  a  heap  of  stones; 
"  Foild  le  chalet  de  Monsieur  Vimpere"  his  version 
of  "Whymper."  The  cliffs  which  now  confronted 
us  were  distressingly  difficult  even  with  the  aid  of 
C  262  3 


i88i]          Ascent  of  the  Matter  horn 

the  dangling  ropes,  almost  impassable  without  them. 
Yet  some  one  carried  up  those  ropes  and  the  iron 
staples  which  hold  them.  That  man  was  John 
the  Baptist.  They  constitute  a  part  of  "Tecbelle 
Jordan"  —  the  Jordan  Ladder  —  so  named  for  J°rdan 
Leighton  Jordan,  an  English  mountaineer  on  whose 
generous  initiative  they  were  bought  and  placed.  \ 

The  "ladder"  once  ascended,  the  few  hundred 
feet  remaining  presented  an  easy  slope  on  which 
our  sole  difficulty  was  the  violent  wind.  At  noon  ontbe 
we  had  reached  the  summit,  a  narrow  crest  about  crest 
twenty  feet  long  and  from  one  to  three  feet  wide 
rising  to  a  point  at  the  southern  end.  Only  four  of 
us  could  safely  squat  on  it  at  once.  It  was  as  cold 
as  midwinter.  Snow  fell  thick  and  fast.  The  wind, 
moreover,  whipped  us  in  savage  whirling  gusts  so 
that  we  dared  not  rise  to  our  feet  lest  we  be  literally 
blown  away  and  make  a  strange  figure  sailing  over 
Italy  tied  together  with  a  rope.  Most  of  the  time 
we  could  see  nothing;  but  occasionally  a  break  in 
the  storm  would  give  us  a  green  glimpse  of  the 
Tournanche  village  of  La  Breuil  two  miles  below; 
and  once  the  Dent  Blanche  disclosed  her  snow- 
crowned  head.  Writing  our  names  on  a  card  we 
placed  it  in  an  anchored  bottle,  the  Matterhorn's 
register  of  guests.  Victor  then  broke  from  the  tip 
of  the  mountain  a  fragment  of  the  hard,  dark  green, 
brittle  hornblende  of  which  it  is  made,  a  souvenir 
which  I  still  possess,  and  we  started  back. 

Halfway  down  to  the  hut  Gilbert  was  suddenly  A  fright- 
struck  by  a  rock  weighing  a  hundred  pounds  or  so, 
which  had  slipped  from  under  the  feet  of  the  last 
man  and  gone  howling  down  the  mountain   side. 
He  thus  received  a  savage  gash  across  the  forehead 

C  263  3 


The  Days  of  a  Man  £1881 

and  was  knocked  senseless  out  of  our  sight,  though 
still  held  by  the  rope.  We  were  all  paralyzed  for  an 
victor  instant,  but  John  soon  rushed  down  to  me  that  I 
might  give  rope  to  Victor,  who  then  hurried  to 
Gilbert's  rescue.  Happily  his  steel-brimmed  hat, 
sliced  by  the  sharp  edge  of  the  rock,  had  offered  a 
momentary  resistance,  and  so  saved  his  life. 

We  now  moved  very  slowly,  Victor  half  leading, 
half    carrying    Gilbert,    dazed    and    blinded    with 
A  man     blood  but  still  courageous.     "C'est  un  homme  fort 
strong      et  iravej>  said  John.    As  we  descended,  the  treacher- 
IroM       ous  character  of  the  Swiss  face  became  increasingly 
evident  and  alarming.    As  a  matter  of  fact,  the  whole 
outer  coat  of  the  mountain  is  loose,  scarcely  a  rock 
anywhere  being  firmly  attached.     For  into  all  the 
joints  of  the  strata,  water  from  melting  snow  finds 
its  way,  to  freeze  at  night  and  thereby  widen  the 
joints  so  that  the  outer  blocks,  large  and  small,  are 
daily  pushed   toward  the  edge.     Thus  nothing  is 
stable,  and  each  year  the  Matterhorn  offers  every- 
where a  new  face  to  the  weather.     But  the  dip  of 
the  strata  being  strongly  to  the  south,  on  the  Swiss 
side  the  loosened  blocks  remain  poised  on  uptilted 
Showers    edges  until  thrown  off,  when  the  fall  of  a  single  one 
of  stones    wjjj  start  a  reguiar  shower  below.    In  the  afternoon 
the  danger  is  most  acute,  the  ice  cement  having 
thawed   and   released   the   debris.     On  the   Italian 
front,  on  the  contrary,  a   rock  drops   as   soon   as 
loosened  and  so  without  starting  a  volley. 

Working  along,  we  soon  heard  a  terrible  uproar, 
and  three  or  four  rods  away  saw  an  immense  ava- 
lanche of  rocks  —  a  dozen  of  them  as  large  as  a 
wagon,  with  hundreds  of  little  ones  yelping  in 
the  rear.  "C'est  une  montagne  terrible!9'  exclaimed 
C  264] 


i88i]          Ascent  of  the  Matter  horn 

John.  Pession,  who  had  been  in  mortal  fear  ever 
since  the  accident,  was  worse  than  useless  for  the 
rest  of  the  day.  "You  must  pardon  him,"  said 
John;  "he  has  a  wife  and  children  in  Val  Tour- 
nanche." 

At  six  o'clock,  after  hair-breadth  incidents,  we  The 
reached  the  hut  and  made  Gilbert  lie  down  on  the  *£"& 
few  armfuls  of  hay,  where  he  soon  went  to  sleep. 
John  now  decided  to  remain  there  over  night  with 
Victor,  Spangler,  and  myself.     We  five  thus  took 
lodgings   12,256  feet  above  the   sea.     The  others, 
not  without  adventures,  made  the  cabin  in  safety. 

Our  refuge  was  a  sort  of  stone  den  six  feet  wide 
by  ten  long  and  five  high  on  the  inner  side,  crowded 
on  a  narrow  flat  ledge  between  a  protecting  pinnacle 
and  a  precipice,  the  only  possible  place  anywhere 
about.  Three  coarse  blankets,  a  little  bench,  a  tin 
bucket,  and  a  basket  of  shavings  comprised  the 
equipment. 

John  sent  us  immediately  to  bed  —  one  on  each  A  frosty 
side  of  Gilbert  to  keep  him  warm.  But  nothing  kept  couch 
us  warm.  Our  clothes  were  wet,  and  my  off  side 
abutted  on  a  frosty  rock  which  carried  away  heat 
faster  than  I  could  generate  it.  John  and  Victor 
lay  on  the  bare  ground.  The  snow  thawed  on  the 
roof  and  little  streams  of  sooty  water  trickled  over 
our  faces.  All  night  long  our  patient  dreamed  of 
climbing  mountains.  Once  he  shouted,  "Attention! 
Attention  toujours!"  At  another  time  he  called  out: 
"Here  we  will  stop  walking  and  take  wheelbarrows." 
At  intervals  the  guides  kindled  a  fire  of  shavings  for 
a  drink  of  chocolate  all  around. 

The  storm  cleared  early  in  the  night,  and  a  sharp, 
cutting  cold  penetrated  our  fastness.  From  time 

C  265  3 


The  Days  of  a  Man 


to  time  the  mountain  snapped  as  the  water  froze  in 
its  joints,  and  occasionally  we  heard  the  loud  roar 
of  rock  avalanches.  In  the  morning  it  was  crystal 
A  majestic  clear.  Above  and  below,  the  whole  majestic  Mat- 
outlook  terhorn  mass  shone  white  with  new-fallen  snow  or 
glistened  with  frost.  Over  the  deep  valley  of  Zermatt 
clouds  hung  white  and  heavy,  setting  us  off,  as  it 
were,  in  a  glittering  upper  world.  Far  in  the  dis- 
tance rose  the  giants  of  the  Bernese  Oberland; 
nearer  the  Dent  Blanche,  the  Weisshorn,  the  three 
peaks  of  the  Mischabel,  and,  to  the  right,  the  long 
crescent  of  the  Breithorn,  Zwillinge  and  Lyskamm, 
which  culminates  in  Monte  Rosa.  It  was  the  sight 
of  a  lifetime. 

Our  invalid  awoke  cold,  disgusted,  and  impatient, 
and  his  swollen  eyelids  looked  each  like  a  ripe 
plum.  We  now  decided  that  he  must  go  down  to 
Zermatt  with  John  and  Victor,  while  Spangler  and 
I  should  wait  until  they  came  back  for  us  —  which 
might  be  the  next  day,  and  might  be  never!  But, 
as  the  Jester  said  in  the  forest  of  Arden,  "travelers 
must  be  contented." 

Shortly  after  they  left,  however,  we  heard  shout- 
ing from  below,  and  soon  the  two  Bics  appeared, 
having  come  up  from  the  cabin  where  they  (and  the 
others)  had  spent  the  night.  We  four  then  began 
to  descend  very  slowly,  for  going  down  was  far 
Another  more  trying  even  than  going  up.  Once  when  Fran- 
^ojs  j^y  accident  hit  me  in  the  eye  with  the  head 
of  his  alpenstock,  and  I  said  nothing,  he  remarked 
to  Daniel:  "Quelle  bonne  disposition!'9  At  this  I 
smiled  and  again  said  nothing. 

About  noon  the  seven  of  us  had  all  reached  the 
cabin,  where  we  found  the  doctor  from  Zermatt 
C  2663 


i88i]  Return  to  Zermatt 

and  four  able-bodied  fellows  with  a  sedan  chair  Good 
for  Gilbert.  There  were  also  several  Val  Tour- 
nanche  men  who  had  got  wind  of  our  trouble  and 
come  up  over  the  Matterjoch,  bringing  food,  wine, 
and  a  rope.  For  a  moment  I  thought  that  we 
might  have  to  fee  the  whole  population,  but  when 
they  saw  we  were  safe  they  melted  away.  Pure 
kindness  had  brought  them,  and  we  acknowledged 
their  fine  human  friendliness  in  the  same  spirit. 
That  incident  typified  one  reward  of  high  moun- 
taineering as  expressed  by  Edward  Whymper,  who 
writes  gratefully  of 

courtesies  received  from  strangers'  hands,  trifles  in  them- 
selves but  expressive  of  that  good  will  which  is  the  essence  of 
charity. 

Our  welcome  in  the  village  was  most  enthusiastic, 
and  the  Matterhornbesteiger  were  the  heroes  of  the 
hour.  In  the  foreign  chapel  prayers  were  offered 
for  the  Queen  of  England  and  for  President  Gar- 
field,  then  lately  stricken  down,  and  thanks  were 
given  for  our  safe  return. 

I   afterward   received  from  "John  the   Baptist"  A  letter 
the  following:  letter,  which  may  be  of  interest  as  from 

,  .&.  r'  111  •         n«      John  the 

the  composition  of  an  unlearned  but  very  intelli-  Baptist 
gent  man.     The  sentence  construction  is  generally 
correct,  but  the  words,  as  will  be  noted,  are  mostly 
spelled  by  ear  —  not  an  easy  thing  to  do  in  French. 

Valtournenche,  le  16  Decbre,  1881 
Monsieur  Jordan: 

CHER  MONSIEUR:  —  J'ai  recus  votres  lettres  le  15  courent, 
laquelle  a  etc  pour  moi  un  grand  plaisir,  premierement  en 
aprenant  que  M.  Gilbert  etait  parfaitement  geri.  Je  regretais 
toujours  de  ne  pa  vous  avoir  prie  de  me  donner  de  ses  nouvelles 

n  267  3 


The  Days  of  a  Man  [1881 

en  arivents  dans  votres  patrie.  Je  vous  prier  de  le  saluer  bien 
de  ma  part,  et  en  meme  tempts  le  remercier  du  cadou  que 
vous  m'avez  remis  en  son  nom  a  Sass.  En  second  lieu  je  vois 
avec  plaisir  que  vous  ne  vous  etes  pas  contenter  de  me  payer 
largement  mes  servisses  de  Tete  passe.  Vous  voulez  encore 
travailler  pour  me  donner  une  renomee  parmi  les  Americains. 
S'est  plus  que  je  ne  merite.  Je  vous  en  remercie  infiniment. 
Je  regrete  boucoup  d'etre  dans  rimpossiblite  de  pouvour  vous 
en  rendre  le  reciproque.  Je  ne  peut  faire  autre  chose  que  de 
vous  soueter  des  jours  heureux  plain  de  Santees  et  d'Amour 
pour  les  Alpes  Pennines.  Je  vous  prie  de  saluer  toutes  1'hono- 
rables  compagnie  que  vous  aviez  avec  vous  Tete  passe.  Ma- 
quignaz  et  les  Bics  vous  font  ses  salutations. 

Recevez  une  bonne  poigne  de  main  de  celui  qui  voudroit 
etre  longtents 

Votre  serviteur, 

Aymonod  Baptiste 

First  The  Matterhorn  was  the  last  of  the  Alpine  peaks 


ascents 


ofthg  to  be  climbed,  being  long  thought  absolutely  in- 
surmountable.  After  many  unsuccessful  attempts, 
it  was  finally  conquered  in  1865  by  Edward  Whymper 
and  his  companions,  Douglas,  Hudson,  and  Hadow, 
led  by  the  famous  Chamonix  guide,  Michel  Croz. 
But  on  the  descent,  near  the  highest  arete,  victory 
was  suddenly  turned  to  mourning  when  a  breaking 
rope  precipitated  four  of  the  party  into  the  abyss. 
Lord  Douglas'  body  was  never  recovered ;  the  others 
lie  in  the  quiet  cemetery  of  Zermatt. 

Three  days  later  Jean  Antoine  Carrel,  the  most 
noted  guide  of  Val  Tournanche,  led  a  company  of 
his  fellows  to  the  top  from  the  Italian  side,  steeper 
and  more  ragged  than  the  other,  but  free,  as  I  have 
said,  from  rock  avalanches.  In  1879  A.  F.  Mom- 
mery,  an  English  mountaineer,  made  the  ascent  up 
the  apparently  utterly  inaccessible  northwest  (Zmutt) 
angle,  a  forlorn  area  of  merciless  rock  through  which 
n  268  3 


REFUGE  HUT,   l88l 
Taken  with  telephoto  lens 


1 881]  The  Matter  horn  Today 

(according  to  a  local  saying  quoted  by  Guido  Rey) 
"God  passes  only  by  night/'  A  number  of  others 
have  since  followed  him. 

Our  course  was  essentially  that  taken  by  Whym-  Modem 
per,  the  point  being  to  keep  as  near  as  possible  to  aids 
the  saw-edged  northeast  angle  out  of  the  reach  of 
volleys  of  stone.  Within  recent  years  the  trip  has 
been  made  easier  by  better  accommodations  and 
various  devices.  A  good  hotel  now  stands  near  the 
Schwarzsee  or  Lac  Noir,  a  tarn  which  lies  two  thirds 
of  the  way  up  to  the  cabin.  Wire  ropes,  I  under- 
stand, have  been  installed  where  needed,  and  the 
whole  course  sways  more  closely  to  the  northeast 
ridge. 

The  ascent  by  my  party  was  a  mad  business  at 
best;  mere  amateurs  in  high  mountaineering,  we 
were  not  in  the  Matterhorn  class.  Personally  I 
have  always  sympathized  somewhat  with  an  old 
Indiana  farmer.  Arriving  late  at  my  lecture,  he 
took  a  front  seat  near  the  teacher  and  listened  with 
much  interest.  At  last  he  could  stand  it  no  longer, 
and  in  a  loud  whisper  asked:  "What  the  devil  were 
they  up  there  for?" 

4 

In  connection  with  my  early  European  tours,  I  Fishes 
spent   as  much  time   as   possible   studying  at   the  again 
Musee  d'Histoire  Naturelle  located  in  the  famous 
park,  Jardin  des  Plantes,  in  Paris,  and  at  the  British 
Museum  in  London,  besides  doing  some  work  in 
the  Universities  of  Berlin  and  Copenhagen.    I  thus 
became  acquainted  with  many  of  the  leading  Euro- 
pean zoologists,  and  especially  with  all  who  had 


The  Days  of  a  Man  £1881 

devoted  themselves  to  fishes.  Of  these,  four  were 
particularly  helpful  to  me  —  Albert  Giinther,  Leon 
Vaillant,  Christian  F.  Liitken,  and  Franz  Hilgen- 
dorf;  later  also,  Franz  Steindachner  of  Vienna, 
though  him  I  did  not  meet  until  1910. 

Guntber  Dr.  Giinther,  the  best  known  of  them  all,  was 
born  in  Germany  in  1830,  and  educated  in  Berlin, 
Bonn,  and  Tubingen  for  the  Lutheran  ministry. 
That  career  proving  little  to  his  taste,  he  then  took 
up  the  study  of  medicine,  and  found  his  way  across 
the  Channel  to  St.  Bartholomew's  Hospital  in 
London.  But  another  and  still  deeper  interest  was 
to  dominate  his  life.  From  early  boyhood  he  had 
been  fascinated  by  the  problems  of  animal  structure, 
beginning  his  researches,  as  he  once  told  me,  with 
the  dissection  of  worms.  Afterward  at  Tubingen, 
where  his  room  overlooked  the  river,  he  found  great 
enjoyment  in  the  study  of  fishes  caught  from  out 
a  window.  So,  finally  abandoning  medicine  as  pre- 
viously he  had  theology,  he  became  curator  of 
fishes  in  the  British  Museum,  where  the  Keeper, 
John  Edward  Gray,  assigned  to  him  the  prepara- 
tion of  a  descriptive  catalogue  of  the  ichthyological 
collections.  With  the  eight  volumes  of  this  great 
work,  the  foundation  of  modern  Ichthyology,  he 
occupied  himself  for  the  twelve  years  from  1859 
to  1870,  inclusive,  putting  in  on  the  average  four- 
teen hours  a  day  from  pure  love  of  the  work.  After- 
ward, as  Keeper  himself,  he  remained  in  service  until 
the  late  '8o's,  when  the  natural  history  collections 
were  removed  from  the  old  building  on  Great  Rus- 
sell Street  to  the  new  one  on  Cromwell  Road  in 
South  Kensington.  He  died  in  1914,  at  the  ripe 
age  of  84. 
C  270  ] 


i88iH  An  Early  Honor 

Giinther  had  the  reputation  of  being  a  crusty  Critic 
critic,  sometimes  needlessly  severe  on  the  slips,  real 
or  apparent,  of  his  contemporaries,  not  even  sparing 
the  masters,  Dr.  Pieter  Bleeker  of  Java,  most  in- 
dustrious of  field  naturalists,  and  Dr.  Gill,  most  dis- 
criminating critic  of  the  literature  of  science.  But 
toward  me  he  was  always  kind  and  considerate,  as 
well  as  to  my  students,  some  of  whom  (Eigenmann 
and  Edwin  C.  Starks  especially)  used  to  go  to  see 
him  whenever  they  were  in  London.  In  1881  he 
made  an  effort  toward  keeping  me  permanently 
with  him  as  assistant  curator  of  fishes.  At  the 
time,  however,  he  was  not  able  to  secure  the  neces- 
sary funds,  and  afterward  Dr.  George  A.  Boulen- 
ger  of  the  Brussels  Museum  accepted  the  position 
in  question.  I  have  often  thought,  though  without 
regret,  how  different  my  life  story  would  have 
been  had  I  settled  down  in  the  British  Museum. 
In  1913,  on  the  occasion  of  my  last  visit  to  Dr. 
Giinther  at  his  home  in  Kew  Gardens,  I  found  him 
almost  blind  but  still  intellectually  active  and  in- 
terested. 

[In  1883,  the  first  great  International  Fisheries  tor- 
Congress  was  held  in  London.     Being  then  at  work  ™£™rfcs 
in  the  Museum  I  took  part  in  the  meetings,  also  Congress 
making  (at  Baird's  suggestion)  an  exhibit  of  all  my 
fish    publications,    nicely    bound    in    red    morocco. 
These  earned  me  the  highest  award,  a  gold  medal, 
with   a   large   engraved   diploma   signed   by  Albert 
Edward  —  then  Prince  of  Wales  —  president  of  the 
Congress.     As  this  was  the  first  and  the  most  im- 
portant of  several  more  or  less  similar  honors,  I 
venture  to  record  it  here.] 

C  271  3 


The  Days  of  a  Man  [1883 

While  in  England  we  frequently  traveled  by  train 
for  an  hour  or  two  in  the  morning,  usually  to  the 
southwest;  then  getting  out  almost  anywhere,  we 
walked  on  until  luncheon  time,  after  which  we  took 
another  railroad  run,  followed  again  by  a  walk 
toward  evening.  In  this  pleasant,  intimate  fashion 
(to  be  highly  commended)  we  beat  our  way  to 
Canterbury,  Hastings,  Winchester,  Salisbury,  and 
A  walk  on  to  Devon  and  return.  At  one  time  three  of  us, 
across  j^  ty[.  Braislin,  a  divinity  student  from  New  York, 
six  feet  five,  Swain,  six  feet  four  and  robust  in  pro- 
portion, and  I,  a  modest  six  feet  two,  walked  from 
Dover  to  Canterbury.  We  made  some  impression 
on  the  Kentish  folk.  "Just  look  at  those  men!" 
I  heard  some  one  say.  And  a  child,  interested  in 
comparative  theology,  asked  her  mother:  "Is  that 
man  as  big  as  God?" 

On  Charles  Darwin,  the  master  of  masters  in 
Zoology,  I  had  not  ventured  to  call  during  my  first 
visit  to  London,  and  his  death  in  1882  robbed  me  of 
the  privilege  of  ever  meeting  him  face  to  face.  But 
the  following  year  I  made  a  special  pilgrimage  to 
his  fine  old  home  near  Down.  Parslow,  his  butler, 
chatted  freely: 

Parslow  For  the  first  twenty  years  after  Mr.  Darwin's  return  from 

on  Darwin  South  America,  his  health  was  very  bad,  much  more  so  than 
later.  He  was  an  early  riser,  and  usually  went  out  for  a  walk 
all  around  the  place  before  his  breakfast,  which  he  took  alone. 
That  over,  he  went  to  his  study  to  write  until  the  rest  of  the 
family  had  finished  their  own  meal.  Mrs.  Darwin  now  came 
in  and  read  to  him  for  half  an  hour  while  he  lay  on  the  sofa. 
Afterward  he  wrote  till  noon,  and  again  after  luncheon  for  a 
while.  Then  he  and  Mrs.  Darwin  used  to  go  to  the  bedroom, 
where  he  rested  and  sometimes  smoked  a  cigarette  while  she 
again  read  aloud.  He  liked  stories  with  happy  endings. 

n  2723 


1883]  Charles  Darwin 

Sometimes  there  were  eighteen  or  twenty  young  Darwins 
or  Wedgwoods  in  the  house.  Four-in-hand  coaches  used  to 
come  down  from  London.  Mr.  Darwin  liked  children.  They 
didn't  disturb  him  in  the  least.  There  were  often  twenty  or 
thirty  pairs  of  little  shoes  to  be  cleaned  of  a  morning,  but  I 
assure  you  there  were  always  plenty  of  servants  to  do  it. 

The  gardener  used  to  bring  plants  into  his  room  often  of 
a  morning,  and  he  used  to  tie  bits  of  cotton  to  them,  and  try 
to  make  them  do  things.     He  used  to  try  all  sorts  of  seeds. 
He  would  sow  them  in  pots  in  his  study.  ...    He  was  a  very  A  good 
social,  nice  sort  of  a  gentleman,  very  joking  and  jolly  indeed;  master 
a  good  husband  and  a  good  father  and  a  most  excellent  master. 
Even  his  footmen  used  to  stay  with  him  as  long  as  five  years. 
They  would  rather  stay  with  him  than  take  a  higher  salary 
somewhere  else.    The  cook  came  there  while  young  and  stayed 
till  his  death  —  nearly  thirty  years. 

There  were  a  quantity  of  people  in  Westminster  Abbey 
when  he  was  buried.  I  and  the  cook  were  among  the  chief 
mourners  and  sat  in  the  Jerusalem  Chamber.  The  whole  church  • 
was  as  full  of  people  as  they  could  stand.  There  was  great  dis- 
appointment in  Down  that  he  was  not  buried  there.  He  loved 
the  place,  and  we  think  he  would  rather  have  rested  there  had 
he  been  consulted. 

The  landlord  of  the  local  "George  Inn"  was  also 
communicative : 

All  the  people  wished  to  have  Mr.  Darwin  buried  in  Down,   Not  with- 
but  the  Government  would  not  let  him.    It  would  have  helped   out  honor 
the  place  so  much,  for  it  would  have  brought  hosts  of  people 
down  to  see  his  grave.     Especially  it  would  have  helped  the 
hotel  business,  which  is  pretty  dull  in  winter  time.    Mr.  Darwin 
was  a  very  fine-looking  man.    He  had  a  high  forehead  and  wore 
a  long  beard.    Still,  if  you  had  met  him  on  the  street,  perhaps 
you  would  not  have  taken  much  notice  of  him  unless  you  knew 
that  he  was  a  clever  man. 

Several  persons  had  a  good  deal  to  say  of  Dar- 
win's extensive  and  judicious  charities.  During  the 

C  273  3 


The  Days  of  a  Man  £1883 

time  of  a  water  famine  he  used  to  ride  about  on 
horseback  to  see  who  needed  water,  and  had  it 
brought  to  them  at  his  own  expense  from  the  stream 
at  St.  Mary's  Cray.  To  Mr.  Parslow  he  left  a  life 
pension  of  fifty  pounds  a  year,  and  the  rent  of  the 
handsome  "Home  Cottage"  in  Down.  Yet  at 
Keston,  three  miles  away,  the  landlady  of  the 
"Greyhound"  had  never  heard  of  Darwin  until 
after  his  death.  "There  was  then  considerable 
talk  of  his  being  buried  in  Westminster  Abbey,  but 
nothing  was  said  of  him  before." 

Leon  In  my  work  at  the  Jardin  des  Plantes  I  was  brought 

jnto  c}ose  reiations  witn  £)r.  Vaillant,  the  ichthy- 
ologist of  the  museum,  a  versatile  and  exact  student, 
the  author  of  many  important  papers,  especially  a 
monograph  on  our  American  "Johnny  Darters." 
I  have  very  pleasant  recollections  of  my  work  with 
him  and  Firmin  Bocourt,  his  associate  of  those  days, 
as  well  as  with  the  faithful  museum  helper,  Alex- 
andre  Thominot,  who  used  to  prepare  specimens  and 
bring  bottles  and  books  for  my  work.  Once  Tho- 
minot said:  "It  is  remarkable  how  you  Americans 
travel.  As  for  us,  we  have  no  need  to;  we  are  at 
the  center  all  the  time."  As  I  write,  I  learn  from 
Dr.  Jacques  Pellegrin,  successor  to  Vaillant,  of  the 
latter 's  death  in  1915,  at  the  age  of  eighty-one. 

French  naturalists  while  at  work  wear  the  blue 
blouse  of  the  peasant,  a  garment  I  also  cheerfully 
assumed.  One  day  an  American  of  some  prominence 
at  home  in  Pittsburgh  came  into  the  room  and, 
seeing  me  in  the  native  costume,  asked  through  his 
interpreter  if  I  had  ever  heard  of  Jordan,  a  fish  ex- 
pert in  the  United  States.  I  had,  and  it  was  pleasant 


1883]  Holiday  Excursions 

to  hear  him  given  a  good  reputation  by  the  friendly 
visitor. 

The  museum  being  closed  on  the  aggravatingly 
numerous  saints'  days,  I  often  used  to  buy  a  ticket 
to  any  neighboring  town,  no  matter  where,  and 
then  tramp  on  to  some  other  point.  Once  a  friend 
and  I  "descended"  at  the  village  of  lie  Adam,  a  lie  Adam 
singularly  pretty  place  about  twenty-five  miles  north 
of  Paris.  Stopping  for  luncheon  at  a  small  cafe, 
we  bought  some  chocolate,  which  we  asked  to  have 
prepared  for  drinking.  But  our  hostess  had  no 
notion  of  it  as  a  beverage,  and  we  finally  made  it 
ourselves  in  the  kitchen.  There  the  good  woman 
held  up  her  hands  in  surprise  at  the  fragrant  liquid 
we  evoked,  and  remarked:  "Chaque  pays  a  ses 
mceurs"  Although  a  million  people  within  the 
same  Department  made  their  first  morning  meal  of 
bread  soaked  in  chocolate,  she  knew  the  article 
only  as  a  popular  sweet. 

As  a  matter  of  course,  I  frequently  visited  the 
Comedie  Frangaise,  to  me  the  most  attractive  as 
well  as  the  most  instructive  of  all  theaters.  At  that 
time  Coquelin  and  Got  were  leading  figures,  and 
with  them  a  young  woman  whose  fame  has  since  ex- 
tended far.  Sarah  Bernhardt  I  first  saw  as  Dona  Sol 
in  Victor  Hugo's  "Hernani";  and  I  distinctly  re- 
call the  wonderful  power  and  passion  which  she 
threw  into  the  sentence,  "Tu  es  mon  lion,  superbe 
et  genereux" 

In  Copenhagen  I  spent  a  week  or  so  at  the  Uni- 
versity as  the  scientific  guest  of  Charles  Frederik 
Liitken,  the  accomplished  professor  of  Zoology.  No 
institution  on  the  Continent  impressed  me  more 
favorably  than  that  one  of  the  North,  and  were  it 


The  Days  of  a  Man  [[1883 

not  that  the  Scandinavian  languages  are  spoken  by 
so  ^ew>  tne  Universities  of  Copenhagen,  Christiania, 
and  Upsala  might  well  have  been  preferred  by  the 
American  student  to  those  of  Germany.  Liitken,  a 
strong,  handsome,  stately  man  of  friendly  nature, 
did  admirable  work  on  fishes,  especially  on  the 
young  of  the  free-swimming  oceanic  forms  which  he 
called  "Spolia  atlantica" 

Passing  on  to  Berlin,  I  was  given  the  privileges  of 
the  university  laboratory  of  big  and  capable  Dr. 
Hilgendorf,  who  had  been  one  the  early  professors 
in  the  University  of  Tokyo.  Hilgendorf  was  to  me 
a  congenial  spirit,  though  I  found  little  else  con- 
genial in  the  heavy  and  pretentious  city.  Then, 
as  since,  its  most  striking  feature  was  to  be  summed 
up  in  the  ubiquitous  sign,  Strengstens  verboten  — 
the  essential  barrenness  of  life  in  Berlin  being  ob- 
scured by  elaborate  regulations  and  official  self- 
complacency. 

Trfitschkf  At  this  period  we  heard  much  of  Treitschke,  a 
professor  of  History  with  a  great  following  both  in 
the  university  and  in  the  city.  Advocating  the 
"blood  and  iron"  of  Bismarck's  philosophy,  he  at- 
tracted great  crowds  to  his  lectures,  which  fell  in 
line  with  the  nationalistic  feeling  so  grossly  stimu- 
lated by  the  victories  of  Metz  and  Sedan.  It  was 
truthfully  said  that  Treitschke  taught  as  history 
what  Bismarck  wrought  into  action.  Moreover,  he 
demonstrated  to  the  satisfaction  of  his  audiences 
that  the  German  race  was  superior  to  any  other; 
that  its  adjustments  —  social,  educational,  political, 
and  military — were  absolutely  perfect;  further- 
more, that  the  Prussian  idea  must  dominate  Ger- 
many and  through  Germany  the  whole  civilized 
C  276] 


1883]          The  State  and  the  People 

world  —  or  at  least  that  part  which  (having  Teutonic 
blood)  was  fitted  for  the  ideals  of  Kultur. 

This  doctrine  involves  in  brief  (1)  the  conception  of  the  State  Kultur 
as  an  ideal  entity  existing  above  and  beyond  the  people,  superior 
to  all  questions  of  right  and  wrong  and  floating  in  a  moral 
vacuum,  the  emperor  being  by  divine  right  its  administrator 
and  mediator;  (2)  the  factor  of  Kultur,  or  supreme  discipline, 
whereby  all  personality  is  merged  into  the  service  of  the  State, 
the  individual  being  merely  a  "brick  in  the  wall  of  an  edifice 
he  cannot  see  and  does  not  understand";  and  (3)  the  doctrine 
of  Social  Darwinism,  or  supreme  necessity  of  conquest,  a 
perversion  of  science  by  which  it  is  imagined  to  be  the  duty 
as  well  as  the  right  of  a  strong  nation  to  absorb  or  to  subdue 
its  smaller,  more  backward  or  more  peaceful  neighbors,  wreak- 
ing on  them  its  own  Kultur,1  as  well  as  subordinating  them  to 
its  own  advantage.  Ideas  of  this  kind  stood  as  a  necessary 
philosophical  basis  for  the  acceptance  of  absolutism  by  the 
German  mind,  and  Hegel  and  other  German  metaphysicians 
were  not  slow  in  developing  a  complete  theoretical  system  to 
accord  with  German  politics. 

Among  other  things,  Treitschke  laid  stress  on  the 
fact  that  all  Germany's  territorial  gains  for  a  century 
had  been  "won  by  Prussia,  and  by  the  sword."  He 
did  not,  however,  foresee  the  time  when  all  these 
would  be  lost  by  Prussia,  and  again  by  the  sword! 
In  Hilgendorfs  laboratory  we  held  "the  propa- 
gandist," as  Ranke,  his  eminent  predecessor,  called 
him,  in  low  esteem,  and  I  myself  never  went  to  hear 
him. 

One  summer  I  also  spent  a  little  time  with  Dr. 
Decio  Vinciguerra,  the  most  eminent  of  Italian 
ichthyologists,  then  director  of  the  Museo  Civico  at 
Genoa,  later  of  the  Aquario  Romano  in  Rome.  At 

1  The  elements  of  "Kultur"  were  conceived  to  be  "Difnsi,  Ordnung  und 
Kraft"  "Service,  order  and  power,"  the  first  and  last  resulting  from  an  order 
or  discipline  enforced  from  above. 


Days  of  a  Man  £1883 


the  time  of  my  visit,  Vinciguerra  was  engaged  in 
raphy  the  study  of  deep-sea  fishes,  spoils  of  the  dredging 
expeditions  of  Albert  of  Monaco,  a  prince  whose 
deep  interest  in  Oceanography  has  given  him  a 
leading  place  among  students  of  that  science.  Robert 
Collett,  the  distinguished  ichthyologist,  professor  in 
the  University  of  Christiania,  to  whom  Prince 
Albert  later  entrusted  his  findings,  I  never  met,  as 
he  was  absent  when  I  visited  his  laboratory.  But 
we  long  maintained  a  friendly  correspondence. 


C2783 


CHAPTER  TWELVE 


ON  our  return  from  Switzerland  to  Paris  in  Sep- 
tember  I  learned  with  dismay  that  "Owen  Hall," 
the  old  science  building  at  the  University  of  In- 
diana,  had  been  struck  by  lightning  and  burned 
with  nearly  all  its  contents,1  including  my  own 
costly  library  and  collections,  besides  the  manu- 
script of  a  considerable  volume  by  "Jordan  and 
Gilbert"  on  the  fishes  of  the  West  Coast  of  Mexico 
and  Panama.  With  the  book  had  also  gone  the 
material  on  which  it  was  based,  most  of  it  not  to  be 
restored  until  the  later  expeditions  of  myself  to 
Mazatlan  in  1895,  and  of  Gilbert  and  Starks  to 
Panama  in  1903.  This  experience  taught  me  a 
lesson,  which  was  to  publish  all  new  matter  at  once, 
leaving  its  coordination  for  a  later  period. 

On  hearing  of  my  losses,  and  forestalling  the  re-  Gathering 
ceipt  of  the  insurance  money  —  $7000  —  I  at  once  * 
began  to  restore  the  library.    I  then  found,  like  so 
many  naturalists  before  me,  that  the  open-air  stalls 
along  the  left  bank  of  the  Seine  were  a  rich  mine  of 
second-hand  books.     Later  I  secured  a  large  part 
of  the  library  of  the  distinguished  naturalist-phi- 
losopher,  Alphonse    Milne-Edwards,    and    in    time 

1  The  greater  part  of  the  Owen  collection  of  fossils  (being  on  the  first  floor) 
was  saved  though  very  much  mixed  up,  specimens  having  tragically  wandered 
from  their  labels.  This  confusion  was  finally  adjusted  by  Dr.  Marcou,  who 
came  from  the  United  States  National  Museum  for  that  purpose,  a  series  of 
duplicates  being  then  transferred  to  Washington  in  return  for  the  great  service 
rendered. 

C  279  3 


The  Days  of  a  Man  £1883 

came  to  have  a  much  more  valuable  collection  than 
before.  It  contained  many  thousand  titles  on  fishes 
alone,  and  was  finally  presented  to  Stanford  Uni- 
versity. 

On  the  On  my  return  to  America,  Baird  offered  me  for  a 
F.*sb  short  time  the  Fish  Commission  steamer  Fish 
Hawk,  on  which  I  went  out  from  Woods  Hole 
around  Marthas  Vineyard  to  gather  the  nucleus 
of  a  new  collection.  The  Fish  Hawk,  it  may  be 
explained,  had  replaced  the  little  Blue  Light  of  1874, 
to  be  itself  later  superseded  by  the  finely  equipped 
and  commodious  Albatross.  My  trip  was  very  suc- 
cessful and  enabled  me  to  make  a  new  start,  al- 
though I  never  afterward  maintained  a  collection  of 
my  own,  regarding  all  duplicates  assigned  me  from 
any  source  as  the  property  of  the  institution  I  rep- 
resented. Of  later  accretions,  the  first  series  went 
mainly  to  the  National  Museum,  the  next  to  Indiana 
or  Stanford,  while  duplicate  sets  were  usually  re- 
served for  London,  Paris,  and  Vienna. 

The  fire  was  a  hard  blow  for  the  University,  the 
better  one  of  its  two  large  buildings  having  been 
destroyed  and  the  necessity  of  reconstruction  being 
very  pressing.  As  the  old  campus  was  far  too  small, 
the  trustees  now  decided  to  abandon  it  and  turn  the 
remaining  building  over  to  the  preparatory  school. 
The  They  accordingly  bought  a  large  forest  of  maples, 
a  beautiful  and  stately  grove  occupying  a  gently 
sloping  hillside  just  east  of  town  and  forming  a  site 
of  special  charm.  Two  brick  buildings  were  hastily 
constructed,  the  larger  one  being  named  Wylie 
Hall,  the  smaller  —  assigned  to  me  —  Owen  Hall ; 
in  due  season,  also,  other  halls  were  built  and  dedi- 
cated to  Kirkwood  and  Maxwell. 
C  280] 


1883]       Exploration  of  Florida  Keys 

In  December,  with  the  help  of  a  student,  William 
H.  Dye  of  Indianapolis,  I  undertook  explorations  at 
Cedar  Keys,  Key  West,  and  Havana.  In  crossing 
northern  Florida  by  rail  from  Jacksonville  on  the 
Atlantic  to  Cedar  Keys  on  the  Gulf,  the  long  train, 
made  up  of  freight  cars  with  a  passenger  coach  at- 
tached, parted  quietly  in  the  middle  so  that  we  were 
left  far  behind  while  the  oblivious  engineer  went 
gayly  on  to  his  terminus.  We  thus  found  ourselves  Marooned 
marooned  for  some  hours  in  the  swamps  which 
border  the  vast  half-submerged  area  of  the  "Ever- 
glades." Not  to  lose  the  chance,  I  used  my  um- 
brella as  a  net  to  "fish  for  gambusinos"  in  the  forest 
pools.1 

But  the  trip  as  a  whole  yielded  rich  booty,  for  Key  West 
Key  West 2  has  the  best  fish  market  in  the  United 
States.  There  food  fish  in  great  variety  are  brought 
in  alive  in  the  wells  of  specially  constructed  boats 
and  killed  as  the  purchaser  demands,  a  method 
which  ensures  their  being  fresh  but  does  not  ac- 
cord with  that  of  certain  Buddhist  fishermen  in 
Japan.  As  "conscientious  objectors"  to  the  killing 
of  any  living  thing,  they  haul  their  catch  out  on 
the  bank  and  leave  it  to  the  option  of  the  fish  to 
live  or  die. 

Key  West  at  the  time  of  my  visit  was  an  extremely 
isolated  little  city  on  one  of  the  outermost  of  the 
white  islands  built  up  from  the  wreckage  of  broken 

1  To  the  commonest  fish  there,  a  minute  viviparous  top  minnow,  Dr.  Felipe 
Poey  gave  the  scientific  name  of  Gambusia,  derived  from  the  Spanish  phrase, 
"  pescar  para  gambusinos"  "  fishing  for  gambusinos"  —  that  is,  catching  nothing. 
In  justice,  however,  it  should  be  added  that  this  tiny  creature  has  proved  to  be 
the  greatest  of  mosquito  devourers.    It  was  therefore  carried  by  my  student, 
Alvin  Seale,  from  Galveston  to  Hawaii,  where  it  has  rapidly  multiplied  and 
whence  it  has  been  introduced  into  Formosa  and  the  Philippines. 

2  Originally  Cayo  Hueso,  Bone  Key. 

r.  281  ] 


The  Days  of  a  Man  £1883 

Mangrove  corals  which  grow  outside  the  reef.  The  formation 
jungles  Of  sucj1  isiands  or  "  keys  "  (literally  quays  or  wharves) 
is  helped  on  by  the  mangrove  —  Rhizophora  —  for, 
once  established,  this  vigorous  shrub  "walks"  farther 
and  farther  into  the  sea.  Its  method  of  progression 
is  by  vertical  branchlets  from  the  limbs,  which  take 
root  in  the  bottom  and  form  a  continuous  tangle, 
catching  whatever  debris  the  waves  may  bear,  coral 
sand  especially.  About  Key  West  are  small  keys  in 
process  of  formation  —  jungles  of  mangrove  half 
covered  at  high  tide  but  appearing  as  little  muddy 
islands  at  low  waters.  In  their  thickets  swarm  in- 
numerable tiny  fishes,  especially  the  young  of  the 
common  "Mangrove  Snapper"  —  Neomcenis  griseus. 
The  whole  region,  indeed,  is  very  rich  in  fish  life, 
offering  an  amazing  number  of  kinds,  many  of  them 
in  great  abundance.  In  our  first  haul  of  the  fine- 
meshed  "Baird  seine"  adapted  for  such  collecting, 
we  obtained  seventy-five  different  species. 

The  fishermen,  chiefly  English,  came  from  the 
Bahamas;  the  other  citizens  had  mostly  fled  from 
farther  north  to  escape  snow  and  ice.  In  general 
we  found  everybody  intelligent  and  appreciative  of 
our  mission. 

A  rattier  At  Key  West  I  saw  a  small  rattlesnake  swimming 
overboard  jn  tne  sea  This  was  an  occurrence  so  unusual  that 
I  gathered  it  in;  it  proved  to  be  a  "prairie  rattle- 
snake" or  "massasauga"  —  Sistrurus  catenatus — • 
a  little  beast  with  few  rattles  but  a  mean  disposi- 
tion. Later  I  saw  a  boatload  of  Louisiana  hay  from 
which  it  had  undoubtedly  fallen  overboard.  The 
incident  suggests  a  digression  on  the  topic  of  ven- 
omous serpents  in  general,  and  of  rattlesnakes  in 
particular. 

n  2823 


1883]      Concerning  Venomous  Snakes 


The  first  and  biggest  rattler  I  ever  saw  at  large,  and  the  Bad 
only  one  by  which  I  was  ever  placed  in  danger,  I  came  upon  neighbors 
in  1878  near  Falls  Church,  Virginia,  not  ten  miles  from  Washing- 
ton.   Kneeling  to  drink  at  a  fine  spring  in  the  woods,  I  suddenly 
caught  sight  of  the  reptile  —  Crotalus  borridus  —  coiled  on  the 
moss  just   above  the  spring,   in   excellent  position  to  strike. 
Since  then  I  have  met  a  good  many  rattlesnakes  of  two  other 
species,  Crotalus  oregonus  in  the  foothills  of  California,  Crotalus 
lepidus  in  the  prairie-dog  holes  of  New  Mexico  and  occasionally 
elsewhere  in  the  South  and  West. 

Other  venomous  American  snakes  are  the  Copperhead  — 
Agkistrodon  mocasen  —  the  Black  or  Water  Moccasin  — 
Agkistrodon  piscivorus  —  and  the  Coral  Snake  or  coralillo  — 
Micrurus  fulvius  —  of  Mexico. 

The  Copperhead  is  a  small,  rattler-like  reptile  —  devoid  of 
rattles,  however  —  with  the  head  of  a  bright  copper  color. 
It  frequents  damp  thickets  along  streams.  It  is  rare  in  the 
North,  though  I  once  caught  one  in  Bean  Blossom  Creek  near 
Bloomington;  in  its  body  were  four  small  fishhooks,  repre- 
senting probably  as  many  boys  who  had  hurriedly  parted 
company  with  it. 

The  Black  Moccasin,  larger  than  the  Copperhead  and  with- 
out the  red,  is  found  in  dark  wooded  streams  of  the  farther 
South.  This  is  very  venomous,  but  not  often  "met  up  with." 
Meanwhile  the  common,  harmless  but  ill-tempered,  rough- 
scaled  water  snakes  —  Natrix  —  which  abound  along  all 
Southern  rivers,  are  all  commonly  called  moccasin  and  held  in 
dread  by  the  inhabitants;  and  the  blow  snake  or  spreading 
adder  —  Heterodon  —  an  evil-minded  and  demonstrative  ser- 
pent without  fangs,  also  common  in  the  South,  is  everywhere 
regarded  as  dangerous. 

The  vicious  Coral  Snake,  brilliant  red  belted  with  black,  is  King 
colored  almost  exactly  like  the  handsome  and  beneficent  King  Snake 
Snake  of  the    Sierra    Nevada  —  Lampropeltis  —  so    useful    a 
destroyer  of  rattlers.    The  coralillo's  fangs  are  fixed,  those  of 
the  rattlesnake  tribe  depressible,  but  erected  in  striking.     At 
Xico  near  Jalapa  I  once  found  a  coralillo  which  had  just  been 
killed.     Determined   not  to  lose  an  interesting  specimen,   I 
carried  it  through  the  village  streets,  thereby  attracting  much 
attention. 

1:283  3 


The  Days  of  a  Man  £1884 

On  the  west  coast  of  Mexico  lives  Pelamis,  a  small  brown 
and  yellow  sea  snake  with  an  oar-shaped  tail,  known  to  be  ex- 
ceedingly venomous.  But  "the  sea  serpent"  is  of  a  very  dif- 
ferent type;  when  not  of  purely  alcoholic  origin,  it  is  usually 
the  great  oarfish  • —  Regalecus  —  which  swims  at  the  surface, 
lifting  above  the  water  the  red  mane  of  its  dorsal  fin. 
The  Gila  Speaking  of  venomous  reptiles,  Myron  Reed  once  sent  to 
Monster  me  m  Irvington  a  Gila  Monster  —  Heloderma  suspectum  — 
from  Arizona.  This  big,  warty,  toad-like  lizard  of  very  re- 
pulsive appearance  is  the  only  four-footed  creature  which  is 
actually  venomous,  poison  lurking  in  its  saliva.  At  that  time 
(1875)  there  was  no  definite  knowledge  of  its  true  character,  — 
only  a  suspicion  entertained  by  Cope,  who  named  it,  —  and 
I  freely  showed  the  animal  to  visitors.  Though  apparently 
sluggish,  it  escaped  from  the  house  and  could  not  be  found; 
but  as  no  fatalities  ensued,  it  probably  perished  in  some  crevice. 


in  In  Havana  I  was  impressed  by  the  fluctuations  of 

Havana  Cuban  paper  currency,  which  rose  with  the  frequent 
rumors  that  the  island  was  to  be  purchased  by  the 
United  States.  Still  more  noticeable  was  the  uni- 
versal prevalence  of  the  lottery,  a  special  curse 
of  most  Latin  nations.  All  day  long  tickets  were 
hawked  about  on  the  street,  and  the  many  parrots 
took  up  the  cry  of  "  doscientos,  trescientos  cincuante 
cinco"  and  so  on.  Many  of  the  streets  are  named 
for  the  virtues  —  (( Industrial  ^Verdad^  "Piedad," 
and  the  like;  but  most  of  those  qualities,  especially 
industry  and  truth,  were  little  in  evidence  among 
the  people  at  large.  A  hand-to-mouth  existence 
under  the  corrupt  and  often  brutal  Spanish  rule 
probably  had  much  to  do  with  the  general  lack  of 
integrity.  And  I  met  individual  citizens  of  the 
finest  type,  especially  members  of  the  staff  of  the 
C  284  3 


1884]  Felipe  Poey 


Royal  University  of  Havana.  Of  these  scholars, 
Felipe  Poey  was  then  the  acknowledged  dean. 
My  acquaintance  with  him  I  value  as  the  most  in- 
teresting feature  of  my  visit. 

The  child  of  a  French  father  and  a  Spanish  mother,  A  Cuban 
Poey  was  born  in  Havana  in  1799,  and  was  there-  naturalist 
fore  eighty-four  years  old  at  the  time  of  our  meeting. 
As  a  student  of  fishes  he  had  worked  with  Cuvier  in 
the  Jardin  des  Plantes  about  1829,  when  the  second 
edition  of  the  latter's  great  work, '  Le  Regne  Animal" 
appeared.     In  1842  he  was  appointed  professor  of 
Zoology  in  the  University  of  Havana,  which  chair 
he  held,  either  in  active  service  or  as  emeritus,  until 
his  death  in  1891. 

A  man  of  large  stature,  with  fair  hair  and  gray 
eyes,  by  no  means  typically  Spanish  in  appearance, 
he  contrasted  strongly  with  his  fellow  Cubans,  and 
he  used  to  say:  "Comme  naturaliste  je  ne  suis  pas 
espagnol — je  suis  cosmopolite."  He  had  a  most  happy 
temperament,  with  a  manner  peculiarly  cheery  and 
genial.  Simple,  direct,  unaffected,  he  was  to  me  one 
of  the  most  charming  of  my  scientific  colleagues. 

His  was  a  deeply  religious  spirit.  In  a  formal 
address  before  the  University  of  Havana  he  closed 
with  the  following  words,  which  I  here  translate: 

I  believe  with  Lamarck  that  there  is  nothing  but  God  in  the 
Universe,  and  that  by  the  word  Nature  we  mean  simply  an 
established  order  (a  revelation  of)  Him  whose  true  name  we 
cannot  decipher;  who,  in  the  burning  bush,  questioned  by 
Moses,  said,  "I  am  that  I  am";  who,  on  Mount  Sinai,  called 
himself  Jehovah,  and  whom  in  our  mortal  tongue,  with  filial 
tenderness,  we  call  God. 

On  making  known  my  errand  at  the  Pescaderia 
Grande,  Havana's  great  fish  market,  the  first  greet- 

C  285  3 


The  Days  of  a  Man  £1884 

ing  was:  "Ah,  but  you  must  see  Don  Felipe;  he 
Don.  knows  all  about  fishes."  And  I  soon  found  that  the 
phrase,  "amigo  de  Don  Felipe"  served  as  a  passport 
to  friendly  help  and  honest  dealing,  for  every  fisher- 
man knew  Poey  and  regarded  him  as  a  personal 
friend.  "Almost  every  day  for  twenty  years," 
said  one  dealer  to  me,  "Don  Felipe  was  in  the  market 
at  noon  when  the  catch  came  in  from  the  boats,  and 
he  knows  more  about  the  fishes  than  the  fishermen 
themselves."  Even  in  the  years  that  followed,  after 
he  ceased  to  visit  the  market,  he  was  not  forgotten 
there,  for  many  a  rare  specimen  found  its  way  from 
the  Pescaderia  to  his  home  near  by  in  the  Calle 
San  Nicolas.  In  a  vague  way,  moreover,  the  towns- 
people generally  had  heard  of  Don  Felipe's  fame 
in  far-off  lands,  and  felt  that  his  glory  was  in  some 
degree  reflected  on  themselves. 

Fishes  The  fish  fauna  of  Cuba  is  enormously  rich.  It 
°f  had,  however,  been  thoroughly  studied  by  Poey. 
But  I  was  able  to  secure  at  the  market  one  small 
"mojarra" — Diapterus  olisthostomus — which  in  forty 
years  of  observation  he  had  never  found.  This 
is  not  so  strange,  as  a  rare  little  fish  that  looks 
like  something  else  may  easily  escape  notice  in  the 
great  mass.  The  people  eat  everything,  big  and 
little,  except  a  few  forms  which  the  law  specifies 
as  poisonous,1  and  the  long  tables  in  the  great  market 
are  always  loaded. 

The  fruit  market  of  Havana  was  the  richest  in 

1  Certain  tropical  fishes  may  at  times  hold  within  their  flesh  a  poisonous 
alkaloid  bearing  some  resemblance  in  effect  to  strychnine,  and  producing  a 
dangerous  disease  called  ciguatera.  In  very  warm  waters  some  species  seem 
to  be  always  poisonous,  some  only  occasionally  so;  and  some  with  dusky  or 
livid  colors  are  regarded  with  much  suspicion,  though  often  without  evidence. 

C  286] 


1884]  River  Explorations 

my  experience.  Besides  the  usual  abundance  of 
oranges  and  bananas,  one  looked  down  on  a  wealth 
of  cherimollas,  albicartes,1  papayas,  and  sapodillas. 
The  last,  a  brown  fruit  like  a  little  russet  apple  but 
having  one  large  seed,  is  to  my  thinking  the  most 
delicious  of  all. 

Into  the  market  in  the  early  morning  came  from  Cruelty 
the  back  country  a  long  procession  of  burros  loaded  to . 

...•i  11  •  i        i  i        •  i    animals 

with  chickens,  as  well  as  with  sheep  and  pigs  tied 
in  pairs  and  slung  saddle-wise,  head  downward, 
over  the  backs  of  the  donkeys  —  the  pigs  squealing 
lustily,  the  sheep  helpless  and  dumb.  To  the  suf- 
fering of  animals  and  even  to  that  of  men,  the 
Spanish  race  seems  everywhere  callous. 

I  had  no  time  to  go  far  into  the  interior  of  Cuba, 
but  the  region  immediately  about  Havana  is  very  at- 
tractive, with  its  white  coral  soil  relieved  by  the 
green  of  tropical  foliage. 

In  the  summer  of  1884,  under  instructions  from  Fish 
Goode,  I  began  a  special  series  of  further  explora-  f"una°f 

ri/Pir  r    i         A  •  •  •     i    American 

tions  ot  the  fish  fauna  of  the  American  rivers,  carried  „•„„. 
on  at  intervals  during  the  next  five  years.     These  basins 
various  expeditions,  continued  in  other  waters  by 
my  colleagues  and  students,  were  in  line  with  Baird's 
theory  of  utility  in  science.    Knowledge  loses  nothing 
through  acquiring  human  values,  and  research  takes 
on  a  certain  dignity  by  serving  at  once  intellectual 
demands  and  human  necessities. 

By  1890  I  had  personally  visited  every  considerable 
river  basin  in  the  United  States.  Later  I  extended 
my  studies  to  include  much  of  Alaska,  Mexico,  and 

1  Avocado  or  "Alligator  Pear,"   both  these  names  being  corruptions  of 

Albicarte. 

n  2873 


The  Days  of  a  Man  1:1884 

Outwork  Canada,  as  well  as  the  South  Seas,  Japan,  and 
on  fishes  Korea.  Of  the  species  of  fishes  now  known  —  be- 
tween 12,000  and  13,000  in  number  —  my  former 
students  and  myself  discovered  more  than  2500 
during  the  course  of  our  various  investigations.  Of 
the  7000  genera,  actual  and  nominal,  named  since 
scientific  nomenclature  began  in  1758,  1085  are  to 
be  credited  to  us. 

in  the  On   the   expedition  of  1884,   I   was  assisted   by 

Southwest  Gilbert  and  Meek.  Beginning  at  Ottumwa,  Iowa, 
we  proceeded  southward  and  westward  through 
Missouri,  Arkansas,  and  Indian  Territory  to  Texas, 
taking  stream  after  stream  in  turn  and  ending  with 
the  Rio  Comal  at  New  Braunfels.  We  thus  secured 
large  numbers  of  specimens,  including  a  great  many 
new  species,  the  whole  constituting  a  very  con- 
siderable addition  to  our  knowledge  of  the  distribu- 
tion of  fresh-water  fishes. 

At  New  Braunfels  I  was  an  involuntary  listener 
to  a  political  campaign  speech,  the  only  one  I  ever 
heard  to  the  end.  The  hall  was  half  a  mile  or  more 
distant  from  my  hotel,  but  the  stentorian  accents  of 
Governor  Hogg  reached  me  through  the  open 
window.  I  have  always  insisted  that  no  man  can 
shout  and  tell  the  truth  at  the  same  time. 


3 

The  following  autumn  certain  unpleasant  cir- 
cumstances which  I  need  not  relate  here  —  since 
they  wholly  concerned  others  than  myself  —  re- 
sulted in  the  abrupt  resignation  of  Dr.  Lemuel  Moss 
from  the  presidency  of  Indiana  University.  The 
board  of  trustees,  an  able  and  devoted  body  made 
C  288  a 


1884]     Presidency  of  Indiana  University 

up  largely  of  alumni,  found  themselves  very  much 
at  a  loss  as  to  the  choice  of  his  successor.  For  the 
time  being,  therefore,  they  recalled  Elisha  Ballan- 
tine  as  acting  president.  Pending  the  election  of  a 
permanent  head,  applications  were  received  from 
thirty-eight  candidates.  One  of  the  more  accept- 
able having  been  asked  to  come  to  the  University 
to  give  an  address  and  get  acquainted,  he  spoke  of 
his  travels  in  Europe  and  incidentally  in  Holland, 
remarking  that  he  had  "visited  Edam,  Rotterdam, 
Amsterdam,  and  other  dam  places."  That  bit  of 
humor  chilled  the  audience,  and  his  name  was  not 
again  mentioned. 

I  was  now  asked  to  go  over  the  list  of  applicants 
and  give  my  judgment  as  to  each  individual.  But 
not  one  seemed  likely  to  prove  a  leader  in  educa- 
tion, and  I  therefore  urged  that  they  consider  my 
associate,  Dr.  John  M.  Coulter  of  Wabash  College, 
to  whom  I  shall  again  refer,  or  else  look  for  a  young 
man  of  promise  from  one  of  the  larger  institutions 
in  the  East  or  North. 

To  my  very  great  surprise  the  board  then  unani-  An 
mously  offered  the  position  to  me  —  an  outcome  as 
undesired  as  unexpected,  for  my  ambition  ran  en-  w/t 
tirely  in  the  direction  of  Natural  History  and  ex- 
ploration, and  I  expected  soon  to  be  called  to  Wash- 
ington in  some  permanent  capacity.  However,  I 
accepted  the  responsibility  temporarily,  at  the  same 
time  presenting  a  letter  of  resignation  to  take  effect 
the  following  August,  at  the  end  of  the  academic 
year  —  a  document  promptly  "lost"  by  the  secre- 
tary of  the  board. 

I  thus  became  president  of  Indiana  University  on 
the  first  day  of  January,  1885.  My  inaugural  ad- 

C  289  3 


The  Days  of  a  Man  1:1885 

dress  I  made  very  informal,  as  my  installation  took 
P^aCQ  m  tne  middle  of  the  year  and  at  a  time  when 
affairs  seemed  at  "dead  low  ebb."  Nevertheless,  I 
spoke  of  the  institution  as  the  most  valuable  of 
Indiana's  possessions,  not  yet  a  great  university, 
not  yet  even  a  real  university,  but  the  germ  of  one, 
its  growth  being  as  certain  as  the  progress  of  the 
seasons.  Having  seen  its  vitality  thoroughly  tested 
in  times  of  trial,  we  had  reason  to  be  most  hopeful. 
For  myself  I  added  the  following  in  all  seriousness: 

It  has  been  said  reproachfully  of  Thoreau  that  with  a  genius 
which  might  have  directed  great  enterprises,  he  preferred  in- 
stead to  lead  a  huckleberry  party.  In  this  matter  I  have  al- 
ways sympathized  with  Thoreau.  It  is  easier  to  find  leaders 
in  the  battles  of  the  world  than  pioneers  in  the  field  of  science. 
Science  demands  singleness  of  purpose,  and  scientific  men  have 
always  been  loth  to  leave  their  own  pursuits  to  accept  duties 
and  trust  from  the  State.  Your  congratulations  may  wait. 
Croesus  once  said  to  a  friend  who  flattered  him:  "Call  no  man 
happy  until  he  is  dead."  Congratulate  me,  if  at  all,  when  I 
have  dropped  the  harness  and  returned  to  my  native  pastures. 

One  of  my  first  duties  was  to  secure  money  for 
new  buildings  from  the  legislature  then  meeting  in 
money  Indianapolis.  The  time  was  short  and  needs  were 
pressing,  the  University's  annual  income  of  $35,000 
being  pitifully  inadequate  and  the  two  halls  already 
erected  quite  insufficient.  But  I  at  once  encountered 
two  distinct  obstacles,  the  one  grounded  in  sec- 
tarian jealousy,  the  other  entirely  personal  to 
myself. 

In  the  legislature  a  group  of  members,  incited  by 
certain  advocates  of  denominational  schools  and  led 
by  an  able  lawyer,  John  R.  Gordon  of  Greencastle, 
were  making  a  vigorous  effort  to  close  the  State 
C  290  ] 


1885]      Struggle  with  the  Legislature 

University  altogether  on  the  plea  that  it  wasted 
state  money  "to  throw  it  into  that  sink  hole."  Still 
others,  not  without  show  of  reason,  wished  to  unite 
the  institution  at  Bloomington  with  Purdue,  the 
State  Agricultural  College  at  Lafayette.  The  latter 
proposition  naturally  did  not  appeal  to  our  sectarian 
rivals ;  the  citizens  of  Bloomington  stood  out  bravely 
against  both  plans,  and  both  were  defeated  for  the 
time  being. 

As  for  the  second  obstacle,  I  found  the  chairman 
of  the  finance  committee  of  the  senate,  James  H. 
Willard  of  New  Albany,  Floyd  County,  violently  op- 
posed to  granting  any  help  whatever  to  the  State 
University  because  I  was  its  president.  Meeting  me 
in  the  lobby,  he  recalled  the  fact  that  a  few  years 
before  I  had  given  a  talk  to  students  on  "College 
Oratory"  and  had  then  taken  one  of  his  greatest 
efforts,  famous  like  the  others  for  rotund  periods 
and  florid  adjectives,  as  an  example  of  a  style  to 
avoid,  and  had  urged  the  boys  to  forswear  all  at- 
tempts to  "rival  the  member  from  Floyd."  "You 
little  dreamed  when  you  laughed  at  me  before  your 
students,"  said  he,  "that  very  soon  I  would  be 
chairman  of  the  senate  committee  of  finance  and  you 
would  come  before  me  begging  for  appropriations." 

Replying  that  I  was  there  solely  in  the  interest  of 
the  state  to  which  we  both  belonged,  and  that  it 
was  not  in  the  least  a  personal  question,  I  asked 
him  to  do  the  right  thing.     He  was  not  appeased, 
however,  and  I  turned  for  help  to  another  quarter. 
Fifteen  graduates  of  the  University  then  sat  in  the  Loyal 
legislature,  and  before  them  I  laid  my  case;   regard-  alumnl 
less  of  party,  they  were  loyal  to  a  man,  and  gave 
me  their  fullest  support.     When  the  matter  came 

C  291  3 


The  Days  of  a  Man  £1885 

up  in  the  finance  committee  of  the  senate,  one  of 
them,  Hugh  D.  McMullen  of  Dearborn  County, 
Dearborn  spoke  sarcastically  of  the  chairman's  attitude.  Wil- 
lard  thereupon  arose  in  high  dudgeon  and  threatened 
to  resign  the  chairmanship.  McMullen  immediately 
moved  that  the  resignation  be  at  once  accepted; 
the  motion  passed  by  acclamation,  and  Willard 
found  himself  high  and  dry.  He  afterward  re- 
marked that  "you  cannot  do  anything  in  a  legis- 
lature full  of  university  alumni." 

rbe  At  the  same  session  the  senator  from  Sullivan, 

member      wj1Q  OppOSed  any  further  endowment  of  the  Uni- 

from  r        i  r  •  -n     r        • 

Sullivan  versity,  set  forth  a  fantastic  argument.  Referring 
to  William  B.  Creager,  then  superintendent  of  schools 
in  his  county,  he  spoke  in  substance  as  follows: 

Six  years  ago  Bill  Creager  was  working  out  road  taxes  in 
Sullivan  at  a  dollar  a  day.  Then  he  went  to  the  State  Normal 
School  at  "Terry  Hut."  Then  Sullivan  hired  him  again,  this 
time  as  teacher,  and  had  to  pay  a  hundred  dollars  a  month. 
Then  he  went  to  the  State  University  at  Bloomington,  which 
we  support  with  our  taxes.  He  comes  back  and  we  make  him 
county  superintendent  ^and  pay  him  two  hundred  a  month. 
That  isn't  fair.  We  pay  for  the  schools  and  he  gets  the  benefit, 
while  we  lose  six  dollars  a  day  because  Bill  Creager  has  been 
eddicated. 

Still  another  member  "from  down  Cincinnati 
way/'  a  saloon  man  of  German  origin,  had  never 
heard  of  universities,  and  asked  what  they  were  for. 
I  explained  their  purpose  to  his  satisfaction  and  ap- 
parently secured  his  vote.  It  is,  of  course,  only  fair 
to  say  that  the  majority  of  the  legislature  were 
competent,  steady-headed  men,  largely  farmers  and 
country  lawyers.  I  may  also  add  that  the  most 
competent  and  helpful  of  all  were  often  attorneys 
C  292  ] 


18853        New  Educational  Methods 

retained  by  the  Pennsylvania  Railroad,  which  had  a 
look-in  on  Indiana  politics.  With  McMullen  at 
the  helm,  I  succeeded  in  raising  the  income  of  the 
University  to  about  $50,000,  besides  securing  an  ap- 
propriation for  a  new  wooden  building  —  the  origi- 
nal Maxwell  Hall  —  with  an  additional  sum  for 
books  and  equipment.  This  was  only  a  start,  but 
never  again  did  I  have  so  hard  a  struggle  with  a 
legislative  body. 

When  I  became  its  president,  the  University  of 
Indiana    contained    135    collegiate    students,    with  changes 
about   150  in  the   preparatory  department,    which 
served  as  a  high  school  for  Bloomington.    In  1886  I 
made  some  sweeping  changes,  doing  away  with  the 
fixed  curriculum  and  adjusting  the  work  so  that 
practically  all  the  subjects  hitherto  taught  in  the 
University,  being  elementary  in  their  nature,  were 
relegated  to  the  first  two  years.     Further  than  this,  The 
we  instituted  a  "major  subject"  system,  by  which  "myor 

i      .       .  i  •     1  i  •      j  professor 

each  junior  or  third-year  student  was  required  to  system 
choose  a  specialty  or  "major,"  and  to  work  under 
the  immediate  advice  of  his  "major  professor," 
whose  counsel  in  details  he  was  obliged  to  secure. 
An  individual  course  of  study  was  thus  framed  for 
each  one.  This  system,  which  has  now  stood  the 
test  of  more  than  thirty  years  in  Indiana,  Stanford, 
and  elsewhere,  was  originally  developed  by  a  com- 
mittee consisting  of  Dr.  Hans  C.  G.  von  Jagemann, 
Dr.  William  Lowe  Bryan,  and  myself.  Its  purpose 
was  to  enable  every  one  to  make  the  most  of  his  four 
college  years,  by  seeking  the  best  teachers  and  the 
subject  best  fitted  to  his  tastes  and  capacity. 
This  scheme  immediately  opened  our  doors  to 

C2933 


The  Days  of  a  Man  £1885 

young  men  and  young  women  of  superior  order, 
though  the  good  people  of  Bloomington,  and  many 
old  friends  of  the  University  as  well,  were  very  much 
alarmed  for  fear  freedom  of  choice  would  lower 
standards  and  bring  in  an  inferior  type.  The  re- 
A  new  verse  was  overwhelmingly  true.  The  classes  of  1886 
an(j  !887,  small  in  number  for  reasons  not  far  to 
seek,  ranked  with  the  strongest  the  institution  had 
ever  graduated.  Numbers,  moreover,  soon  doubled, 
and  the  professors  themselves  felt  a  stimulus  due 
to  contact  with  young  people  drawn  —  not  driven 
—  to  their  work. 

In  1886,  also,  I  persuaded  the  board  of  trustees 
to  discontinue  the  preparatory  school,  throwing  all 
responsibility  for  local  secondary  work  on  the  town, 
and  turning  over  the  abandoned  old  building  for 
high  school  purposes.  Thus  cutting  in  half  the 
nominal  registration  again  created  some  alarm,  but 
that  too  abated  when  it  was  found  that  the  num- 
ber of  new  matriculates  exceeded  that  apparently 
lost  by  the  separation  of  the  high  school.  Mean- 
while, moreover,  the  graduating  classes  rapidly  in- 
creased in  size. 

As  to  the  faculty,  my  first  executive  move  was 
to  divide  my  work  and  call  Dr.  Branner,  already 
regarded  as  among  the  most  promising  of  American 
investigators  in  his  field,  to  the  new  chair  of  Geology 
and  Botany.  In  1888,  however,  Botany  was  made 
a  separate  department  under  the  direction  of  Dr. 
Douglas  H.  Campbell,  a  brilliant  young  investi- 
gator from  the  University  of  Michigan,  then  lately 
returned  from  Europe  where  his  work  had  com- 
manded  the  highest  praise. 

Another  of  my  early  innovations,  already  noticed, 

C2943 


Choice  of  University  Professors 

was  to  ask  Dr.  Kirkwood  to  devote  his  whole  time 
to  Astronomy  —  Algebra  and  Geometry  being  as- 
signed to  Swain. 

But  next  to  freeing  the  University  from  its  self-  Promising 
imposed  educational  fetters,  my  most  important 
move  was  to  bring  trained  and  loyal  alumni  into 
the  faculty.  Up  to  that  time  vacancies  had  often 
been  filled  by  professors  released  for  one  reason  or 
another  from  Eastern  institutions.  Among  my  own 
early  selections  were  a  few  young  teachers  from  the 
seaboard  universities,  but  most  of  these  failed  to 
adapt  themselves,  appearing  to  feel  that  coming  so 
far  West  was  a  form  of  banishment.  Indeed,  as  a 
whole,  they  seemed  more  eager  to  get  back  East 
than  to  build  up  a  reputation  in  Indiana.  Moreover, 
I  found  among  the  recent  graduates  several  of  re- 
markable ability;  to  them,  therefore,  I  promised 
professorships  when  they  had  secured  the  requisite 
advanced  training  in  the  East  or  in  Europe. 

My  first  alumnus  appointment  was  that  of  Horace  A. 
Hoffman  in  Greek  —  in  which  field  he  had  already  served  as 
instructor  —  after  his  completion  of  special  studies  in  Harvard 
and  at  Athens.  The  choice  abundantly  justified  itself,  and 
Hoffman  afterward  served  for  many  years  as  dean  of  the  faculty, 
retiring  as  emeritus  in  1920.  Swain's  turn  came  next.  Dr. 
Kirkwood  having  indicated  his  desire  soon  to  withdraw,  I  told 
my  stalwart  Quaker  that  if  he  would  go  to  Europe  and  prepare 
himself  as  thoroughly  as  possible,  the  chair  of  Mathematics 
would  be  held  for  him.  He  accordingly  worked  for  a  consider- 
able time  under  Chrystal  of  Edinburgh,  returning  with  an  ex- 
cellent record  and  renewed  enthusiasm.  In  1891  he  became 
professor  of  Mathematics  at  Stanford  University;  two  years 
later  he  was  called  to  the  presidency  of  Indiana,  afterward  to 
that  of  Swarthmore  College,  Pennsylvania,  the  leading  institu- 

C  295  3 


The  Days  of  a  Man  £1885 

tion  of  the  Hicksite  Quakers,  the  liberal  wing  of  the  Society  of 
Friends. 

Bryan,  a  picturesque  writer  and  most  effective  speaker,  of 
winning  personality,  showed  marked  promise  in  the  new  science 
of  Physiological  Psychology.  On  his  return  from  the  Uni- 
versity of  Berlin  I  appointed  him  professor  of  Philosophy, 
which  then  included  all  forms  of  mental  science.  Later,  by  a 
turn  in  events  he  became  successor  to  President  Swain,  a 
position  he  still  fills  with  marked  success.  In  lecturing  over  the 
state  I  often  took  Bryan  with  me  to  strengthen  my  influence 
with  young  men. 

Gilbert  I  recalled  in  1888  as  professor  of  Zoology.  Of  Eigen- 
mann's  relations  and  advancement  I  have  already  written  in 
detail. 

Besides  those  above  noted,  I  may  mention  Dr.  James  A. 
Woodburn,  professor  of  American  History;  Allan  B.  Philputt 
in  Latin,  now  a  leading  clergyman  of  Indianapolis;  Rufus 
L.  Green  in  Pure  Mathematics,  since  1894  on  the  Stanford 
faculty;  and  Robert  E.  Lyons  in  Chemistry.  Other  Indiana 
men  whom  I  helped  start  on  the  road  to  professorships  in  their 
Alma  Mater  were  David  M.  Mottier  in  Botany;  William  A. 
Rawles  in  Economics;  John  A.  Miller  in  Astronomy,  later 
professor  at  Stanford  and  at  Swarthmore;  Samuel  B.  Harding 
in  Modern  History;  Arthur  L.  Foley  in  Physics;  Edward  H. 
Griggs  in  Literature;  George  P.  Morris,  Robert  Newland,  and 
Alfred  Mosemiller  in  French;  and  Robert  J.  Aley  in  Mathe- 
matics, now  president  of  the  University  of  Maine. 

Search  In  general,  I  was  rigidly  compelled  by  limitation 
f°r  of  funds  to  look  for  men  of  future  promise  rather 
than  of  actual  professional  achievements.  As  a  re- 
sult, Indiana's  list  of  professors  was  closely  scanned 
every  year  by  Harvard,  Cornell,  and  other  Eastern 
institutions. 

A  peculiarly  interesting  outside  appointment, 
which  failed  of  realization,  however,  was  that  of 
Fridtjof  Nansen,  a  young,  blond,  Norwegian  giant 
of  six  feet  five,  to  whom,  in  1886,  I  offered  the  chair 

n  296] 


1885]  Research  and  Teaching 

of  Zoology  made  vacant  by  Gilbert's  acceptance  of  N onsen 
a  professorship  in  Cincinnati.  Nansen  was  then 
curator  of  the  museum  at  Bergen,  where  his  ex- 
cellent work  on  the  anatomy  of  the  Hagfish  — 
Myxine  —  had  attracted  my  attention.  He  had 
also  captured  and  mounted  several  elk,  stag,  rein- 
deer, and  other  big  beasts  of  the  North. 

Having  at  first  accepted  my  offer,  when  the  op- 
portunity afterward  came  to  conduct  an  exploring 
trip  across  Greenland  on  foot,  he  asked  for  his  re- 
lease —  though  his  friends,  he  wrote,  thought  him 
"a  fool  to  do  so."  The  Greenland  expedition, 
nevertheless,  led  to  his  successful  career  as  an  ex- 
plorer. He  was  later  appointed  professor  in  the 
University  of  Christiania,  and  subsequently  be- 
came an  active  factor  in  the  political  life  of  Norway, 
of  which  nation  he  is  now  one  of  the  most  prominent 
citizens. 


At  that  time  the  youngest  university  president  in  Old-school 
the  country,  I  had  little  sympathy  with  the  con-  Presidents 
ventional  methods  of  my  contemporaries  in  similar 
positions,  nearly  all  of  whom  were  retired  clergy- 
men and  ex  officio  professors  of  Philosophy.  With 
the  exception  of  Dr.  Eliot,  originally  a  chemist, 
scarcely  one  of  them  had  had  any  scientific  experi- 
ence or  training.  And  some  degree  of  contact  with 
objective  reality  I  have  ever  thought  an  important 
element  in  university  administration.  Consequently 
in  undertaking  administrative  duties,  I  decided  not 
to  abandon  either  research  or  teaching,  as  most 
other  university  heads  had  done,  and  throughout 

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Bionomics  my  thirty-three  years'  service  at  Indiana  and 
Stanford,  I  gave  each  year  (unless  absent)  a  course 
of  lectures  on  what  was  later  called  by  Professor 
Patrick  Geddes  of  Edinburgh  the  Science  of  Bio- 
nomics. This  deals  with  the  philosophy  of  Biology, 
beginning  with  the  laws  of  organic  life  and  leading 
up  to  Eugenics  and  Ethics.  Meanwhile  I  was  con- 
tinuously engaged  in  some  line  of  research  in  Ichthy- 
ology, or  in  fields  related  to  the  origin  of  species. 

It  has  always  seemed  to  me  that  if  a  university 
president  is  to  exert  a  stimulating  influence  on 
students,  he  should  never  relinquish  the  oppor- 
tunities of  the  classroom.  Again,  as  I  have  already 
implied,  to  judge  the  work  of  scholars  accurately  he 
himself  should  be  a  scholar,  which  condition  he  can 
maintain  only  through  some  form  of  actual  re- 
search. Without  personal  effort  toward  the  ex- 
tension of  knowledge,  he  is  likely  to  fall  out  of 
harmony  with  scholarship  and  thus  fail  in  his  most 
important  duty  —  the  selection  of  progressive  men. 
Foibles  Moreover,  a  university  head  is  subject  to  the  foible 
ofunwer-  of  omniscience,  being  expected  by  the  public  to 

sity  heads  i          •  i  i        •  -11 

speak  with  authority  on  almost  every  conceivable 
subject.  Lacking  the  discipline  of  research,  he  is  in 
danger  of  being  satisfied  with  second-hand  knowl- 
edge and  of  drifting  with  the  current  along  lines  of 
least  resistance. 

i  The  obligations  of  my  position  now  led  me  to 
enter  on  a  new  kind  of  activity  alien  to  my  taste 
and  preparation.  Up  to  1885  I  had  given  a  few 
scientific  lectures  to  general  audiences,  but  no  public 
addresses  of  other  character  beyond  the  occasional 
reading  of  an  essay  on  some  special  occasion.  It 
became  at  once  evident,  however,  that  I  must  make 
n  298  ] 


Public  Lectures 


the  people  of  Indiana  realize  that  the  State  Uni-  Value  of 
versity  belonged  to  them.    Accordingly  I  soon  pre-  hizher. 
pared  a  lecture  on  the  "Value  of  Higher  Education" 
which  I  gave  at  teachers'  institutes  and  before  high 
schools  in  practically  all  the  ninety-two  counties  of 
the  state.     I  thus  developed  for  the  University  a 
kind  of  intellectual  leadership  which  brought  many 
of  the  finest  types  of  young  men  and  young  women 
to  its  doors. 

In  connection  with  my  talks,  I  also  put  forth  every  Making 
legitimate   effort   to   secure   influence   in   the   legis-  frunds 
lature,    not   by   presence   in   the   lobby   at   Indian- 
apolis but  by  friendly  acquaintance  beforehand  with 
rising  young  lawyers  and  others  likely  to  be  chosen 
to  direct  state  affairs.    In  this  I  was  unquestionably 
successful,  making  friends  in  both  parties  and  in 
every  town  by  the  simple  means  of  interesting  people 
in  what  I  was  trying  to  do. 

We  were,  nevertheless,  distinctly  handicapped 
by  our  location,  for  Bloomington,  then  a  small 
town,  lies  (as  I  have  said)  in  a  district  of  thin  red 
soil  just  south  of  the  line  of  glacial  drift  which 
overlies  and  enriches  the  northern  portion  of  the 
state.  Railroad  connections  were  not  good,  and  re- 
lations with  Indianapolis,  the  center  of  the  state  in- 
tellectually, politically,  and  financially,  were  by  no 
means  satisfactory.  With  the  continuing  expan-  Growth  of 
sion  of  the  University  and  of  Bloomington's  in-  Indiana. 

i  i  ./»..  ..«•!•  r        University 

dustry,  the  quarrying  of  white  oolite  limestone  tor 
building,  conditions  have  greatly  improved,  and  the 
institution  now  holds  the  position  it  deserves  as 
the  source  and  center  of  Indiana  scholarship,  having 
at  present  an  enrollment  of  nearly  3800  students. 
For  many  years,  however,  its  influence  had  been 

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The  Days  of  a  Man  £1885 

potent  only  in  the  southwestern  third  of  the  state. 
During  the  six  and  a  half  years  of  my  incumbency, 
therefore,  I  used  every  effort  to  help  put  Blooming- 
ton  on  the  map. 

A  wise        Throughout  my  entire  term  I  had  the  support  of 
board  of  an  admirable  board  of  trustees,  very  intelligent  on 

trustees        .  .  i-  i  •    i  • 

the  whole,  and  very  sincere,  standing  high  as  in- 
dividuals in  their  respective  communities.  Most  of 
them  were  graduates  of  the  University  itself,  and 
all  were  interested  in  my  plans  for  making  it  more 
effective  and  influential,  though  meanwhile  they 
never  attempted  to  meddle  with  matters  outside 
the  range  of  their  responsibilities.  Of  some  of  them 
I  wish  to  speak,  however  briefly. 


To  Dr.  James  D.  Maxwell  I  have  already  made  friendly 
acknowledgment.  Major  James  L.  Mitchell,  a  veteran  of  the 
Civil  War  and  for  a  time  mayor  of  Indianapolis,  was  always 
wise,  sympathetic,  and  just.  For  him  we  felt  an  affectionate 
friendship  which  included  as  well  his  devoted  wife  and  son 
"Jimmie,"  now  a  leading  attorney. 

Judge  David  D.  Banta  was  one  of  the  salt  of  the  earth.  In 
1888,  at  my  request,  he  resigned  his  position  as  president  of 
the  board  to  become  dean  of  the  Law  School,  then  newly  es- 
tablished under  rather  unusual  circumstances.  The  year  be- 
fore, having  already  secured  the  whole  sum  originally  asked 
for  and  finding  the  legislature  still  well  disposed,  I  ventured 
to  suggest  to  Senator  McMullen  the  appropriation  of  an  ad- 
ditional amount  for  a  School  of  Law.  My  plan  was  at  once 
taken  up  and  the  money  cheerfully  voted. 

Judge  Robert  D.  Richardson  was  a  fine  spirit,  clear-headed 
and  devoted  to  the  University  —  as  well  as  to  all  other  good 
causes.  His  two  sons,  Emmett  and  Owen,  followed  me  to  Stan- 
ford, where  they  both  graduated.  Isaac  Jenkinson,  who  suc- 
ceeded Judge  Banta  as  president  of  the  board,  was  also  an 
intelligent  and  faithful  official. 

c  3003 


a 


1885]  A  Great  Sorrow 

At  the  time  of  my  election,  the  trustees  were  ap-  Alumni 
pointed   by   the   state   board   of  education,    an   ex  trustees 
officio  body  presided  over  by  the  superintendent  of 
public  instruction.     In  the  spring  of  1891  I  secured 
the  passage  of  a  bill  providing  that  three  of  the  eight 
members  should  be  chosen  by  the  alumni  of  the  in- 
stitution   resident    in   the    state.      This   ensured    a 
healthy  participation  in  university  affairs   by  the 
graduates,  and  a  renewed  interest  in  its  operations. 

In  the  spring  of  1^85,  accompanied  by  three  of  my 
colleagues,  I  made  a  visit  to  Lake  Superior.  The 
scientific  results  of  this  trip  were  not  very  important, 
being  mainly  a  verification  of  Agassiz's  observations, 
published  in  1850.  The  scenery  about  Mackinac 
Island,  Sault  Ste.  Marie,  and  the  Keweenaw  Pen- 
insula we  found  very  interesting. 

In  November  of  the  same  year  my  children  and  I  Death  of 
suffered  a  disheartening  loss  in  the  death  of  my  wife  s£™nen 
Susan.  This  was  the  last  of  a  series  of  fateful  events  jordan 
with  which  the  reader  is  now  familiar  and  which  oc- 
curred during  a  period  of  little  more  than  two  years 
out  of  the  middle  of  my  life.  Edith,  the  eldest  of 
the  children,  was  then  not  quite  nine,  Harold  a  little 
over  three,  and  Thora,  a  sweet  child  whom  we  thought 
like  her  mother,  only  a  baby.  Edith  and  Harold 
—  both  of  whom  graduated  from  Stanford  Uni- 
versity in  due  season  —  have  now  for  some  years 
been  living  useful  lives  of  their  own,  though  always 
in  touch  with  mine.  Upon  leaving  Stanford,  where 
she  specialized  in  History,  Edith  took  her  master's 
degree  under  Dr.  Henry  Morse  Stephens  at  Cornell. 
Returning  to  California,  she  became  a  very  success- 
ful teacher  of  History  in  secondary  schools.  At  the 

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The  Days  of  a  Man  £1885 

time  of  her  marriage  to  Dr.  Nathaniel  Lyon  Gardner, 
assistant  professor  of  Botany  in  the  University  of 
California,  she  was  head  of  the  department  of  His- 
tory in  the  well-known  Polytechnic  High  School  of 
Los  Angeles. 

Harold,  who  graduated  in  Chemistry,  was  for 
several  years  employed  in  various  smelters  in  Mexico 
and  Central  America,  where  he  made  a  good  record. 
Recently,  impelled  partly  by  necessity  due  to  dis- 
turbed conditions  in  the  mining  industry  but  largely 
from  a  desire  to  get  back  to  the  soil,  he  has  taken 
up  the  business  of  orchardist  in  Oregon.  Thora's 
span  of  life  was  very  brief,  as  she  died  about  a  year 
after  her  mother. 


C  302  3 


CHAPTER  THIRTEEN 


To  the  University  came  naturally  from  time  to  Alfred 
time  various  distinguished  men.  We  once  had  a 
visit  from  Alfred  Russel  Wallace,  a  wonderfully 
sincere  and  intelligent  observer  who  in  his  wide 
range  of  experience  had  seen  nature  in  many  phases, 
all  of  which  he  reported  faithfully  and  in  most 
interesting  fashion.  And  in  the  early  days  of  his 
fame  Henry  George  spoke  at  Bloomington.  This 
gave  me  the  opportunity  to  talk  with  him  on  the  George 
application  of  the  Single  Tax  to  actual  conditions. 
I  wanted  to  find  out  whether  he  thought  the  scheme 
should  be  put  into  operation  all  at  once,  or  by 
degrees,  and  whether  in  his  judgment  the  public 
ought  first  to  buy  out  vested  rights  in  land. 

Sudden  action,  it  seems  to  me,  would  immediately 
unsettle  or  destroy  land  values,  and  would  be,  more- 
over, a  breach  of  faith  with  legitimate  vested  inter- 
ests, such  values  having  been  recognized  and  guaran- 
teed by  the  government  from  time  immemorial. 
Furthermore,  farm  lands  —  as  well  as  city  lots  — 
are  owned  by  "innocent  purchasers"  who  have 
largely  invested  all  and  often  more  than  all  their 
personal  capital  in  such  holdings.  A  violent  over- 
turn I  thought  politically  impossible  and  purchase 
by  the  state  financially  so,  while  confiscation  by 
degrees  might  be  politically  acceptable  and  yet  fail 
in  justice  to  the  individual. 

Mr.  George  did  not  answer  me  directly  nor  did 
he  make  clear  his  views  in  this  regard,  being  inter- 

C  303  3 


The  Days  of  a  Man  £1887 

ested  primarily  in  the  outcome  rather  than  in  the 
method.  Apparently,  also,  he  did  not  wish  to  advo- 
cate any  particular  plan,  although  to  put  the  theory 
into  operation  one  or  another  must  certainly  be 
chosen.  His  own  inclination  seemed  to  be  to  rush 
it  through  at  once,  thus  taxing  out  of  existence  land 
values  as  distinguished  from  labor  values.  He  was 
personally  very  interesting,  and  a  very  effective 
speaker;  but  I  have  never  yet  got  from  him  or 
from  any  of  his  followers  a  satisfactory  answer  to  the 
question  of  how  to  substitute  land  taxation  for  the 
old  system  in  effect  time  out  of  mind. 
Wendell  One  lecture  we  had  from  Wendell  Phillips,  a  man 
Phillips  Of  great  earnestness,  with  a  remarkable  command 
of  simple  and  strong  language  without  labored 
climaxes  or  any  visible  effort  at  oratorical  effect. 
His  theme,  "The  Lost  Arts/'  naturally  demanded 
no  display  of  the  moral  vehemence  for  which  he 
was  noted  in  his  campaign  against  slavery.  But  it 
was  a  delight  to  see  and  hear  a  maker  of  history; 
it  is  well,  particularly  for  young  people,  to  know 
the  great  of  the  passing  generation.  One  of  my 
present  regrets  is  that  when  younger  I  did  not 
more  often  venture  to  intrude  myself  on  the  privacy 
of  men  I  had  learned  to  worship.  I  never  saw 
Lincoln,  Emerson,  Darwin,  or  Huxley,  although  the 
last  three  were  fairly  within  my  reach. 

Henry  Ward  Beecher  also  spoke  once  for  us.  A 
man  of  force  and  of  remarkable  personal  charm, 
he  had  relatively  little  of  the  critical  faculty  which 
might  have  saved  him  from  certain  exhibitions  of 
undue  sentimentalism.  But  beyond  question  he 
deserved  well  of  his  country. 
A.  Bronson  Alcott  of  Concord  was  another  of  our 

C  304  3 


18883  Theodore  Roosevelt 

lecturers,   though   his   somewhat   esoteric   doctrines 
met  with  scant  response  even  from  the  Bates  School 
of  Philosophy.     As  a  matter  of  fact,  his  visit  was 
chiefly  remembered  because  of  his  cold  reception  of 
Indiana  hospitality.     In  accordance  with  the  pre-  Western 
vailing  Southern  custom,  his  hostess  had  spread  a  hosPitahty 
groaning   table  —  roast    turkey,    scalloped   oysters, 
chicken  pie,  and  boiled  ham,  flanked  by  all  manner 
of  toothsome  jellies,  pickles,  and  preserves,  to  be 
followed  by  ice  cream  and  melting  layer  cakes.    To 

the  horrified  dismay  of  Mrs.  H and  her  clever 

daughters,  Alcott  curtly  declined  it  all,  explain- 
ing that  he  ate  next  to  nothing  and  but  little  of 
that. 


Theodore  Roosevelt  came  at  my  invitation  in  the  Roosevelt 

and 
reform 


spring  of  1888  to  speak  on  Civil  Service    Reform,  and 


which  he  did  with  effectiveness  and  energy.  I  first 
met  him  on  this  occasion;  he  was  then  United 
States  Civil  Service  Commissioner,  and  rising  to 
prominence.  After  the  lecture  we  started  together 
for  Indianapolis.  A  tornado  having  blocked  the 
trains,  we  were  obliged  to  spend  the  night  in  the 
little  station  of  Limedale  —  then  Greencastle  Junc- 
tion. During  this  long  wait  he  told  me  something 
of  his  political  ambitions,  which  already  ran  high, 
although  he  was  only  thirty  years  old.  With  the 
opinions  of  George  William  Curtis  and  other  "Mug- 
wumps" of  that  day  he  had  entire  sympathy,  but 
he  would  not  join  them  formally.  Said  he : 

I  can  understand  how  a  man  can  work  outside  the  party 
or  inside  the  party;  but  he  cannot  do  both.  I  shall  always 
work  inside  the  Republican  party,  and  shall  never  undertake 
any  movement  without  a  substantial  group  to  back  me  up. 

3 


The  Days  of  a  Man 


In  the  course  of  the  night  he  recalled  a  conver- 
sation he  once  had  with  Murphy,  the  Democratic 
"boss"  of  New  York  State.  Expressing  surprise  that 
Murphy  should  have  chosen  a  Republican  for  a 
certain  remunerative  office,  he  was  answered  : 


You  are  a  young  man,  Mr.  Roosevelt.  When  you  are  as 
old  as  I  am  you  will  know  that  there  is  no  politics  in  politics. 

Roosevelt-      The  essence  of  Civil  Service  Reform,  according  to 
Tan.,  4      Roosevelt,  was  "to  take  politics  out  of  politics." 

epithets  .  TIT 

From  that  time  on,  as  will  later  be  seen,  I  had 
with  him  many  and  varied  relations.  These  ranged 
from  that  of  valued  friend  and  adviser  (especially 
on  matters  pertaining  to  the  Pacific)  to  "molly- 
coddle" or  "international  Mrs.  Gummidge."  For, 
though  a  lover  of  peace  as  a  general  thing,  Roosevelt 
was  increasingly  obsessed  with  the  elemental  glories 
of  war,  and  cherished  the  belief  that,  as  he  expressed 
it,  "to  play  a  great  part  in  the  world,  a  nation  must 
perform  those  deeds  of  blood  which  above  all  else 
bring  national  renown."  In  the  efficacy  of  the  inter- 
national "big  stick,"  also,  he  placed  his  trust.  For 
differences  of  opinion  he  had  always  large  charity,  — 
for  difference  in  feeling  often  none  at  all,  —  a  fact 
which  explains  some  matters  otherwise  hard  to 
understand. 

A  joyous  Brought  up  amid  the  traditions  and  conventions 
nature  of  jsjew  York  society,  he  was  nevertheless  joyously 
non-conventional.  His  sense  of  humor  was  not 
keen,  he  was  never  subtle,  but  his  appreciation  of  a 
good  time  was  large  and  unfailing.  His  own  jokes 
he  in  a  way  italicized  by  change  of  voice  to  a  sudden 
falsetto.  Thus  I  once  heard  him  say,  —  at  Berkeley, 
,in  1909,  —  "While  Congress  was  debating  the 

C  3063 


1 888]  Theodore  Roosevelt 

question,  I  took  the  Canal  Zone  and  LEFT  CONGRESS 
TO  DEBATE  ME!"  —  the  last  phrase  being  spoken 
an  octave  higher  than  the  others,  which  gave  a 
humorous  twist  indicating  that  the  remark,  after- 
ward much  criticized,  was  only  half-serious. 

As  naturalists  we  always  met  on  common  ground.  Roosevelt 
For  Natural  History  was  Roosevelt's  first  love  as  as  . 
well  as  his  last  enthusiasm.  Entering  Harvard  at 
the  age  of  eighteen,  he  had  hoped  to  devote  his  life 
to  it;  but  defective  eyes  do  not  connect  well  with 
microscopes.  His  ambition  was  therefore  thwarted 
by  teachers  who  limited  animal  study  to  the  micro- 
scopic field,  overlooking  the  fact  that  besides  pri- 
mordial slime  and  determinant  chromosomes,  there 
are  also  in  this  varied  world  grizzly  bears,  tigers, 
elephants,  and  trout,  as  well  as  songbirds  and  rattle- 
snakes —  all  of  them  profoundly  interesting  and  all 
alike  worthy  of  serious  study.  "When  you  ask  us 
why  we  study  what  we  call  nature,"  said  an  ancient 
Persian  sage,  "we  stammer  and  are  silent.  We  feel 
as  the  Creator  might  feel  if  asked  why  he  made  all 
these  things." 

Discouraged  as  to  his  original  choice,  Roosevelt 
turned  to  Political  Science  and  then  presented  his 
private  collection  of  bird  skins  to  Baird,  who  later 
gave  them  to  me,  as  the  Smithsonian  already  pos- 
sessed full  series  of  every  species.  I  transferred 
them  in  turn  to  the  University  of  Indiana,  and  they 
now  rest  in  Owen  Hall  in  an  elegant  case,  each  skin 
nicely  prepared  and  correctly  labeled  in  the  crude, 
boyish  handwriting  which  the  distinguished  collector 
never  outgrew. 

At  the  White  House  I  once  had  occasion  to  re- 
mark: "They  spoiled  a  good  naturalist  in  making 


The  Days  of  a  Man  £1912 

Love  of  you  a  statesman."  But  the  naturalist  never  dis- 
Krds  appeared.  In  1912,  during  an  automobile  drive 
across  the  Santa  Clara  Valley,  I  noted  his  keen 
interest  in  the  sparrows  and  warblers  of  roadside 
thickets.  These  he  could  call  by  their  first  names, 
and  mostly  by  their  second.  In  the  Yosemite,  with 
John  Muir,  he  observed  facts  in  bird  and  squirrel 
life  which  had  escaped  even  his  keen-eyed  and 
sympathetic  companion. 

In  our  exploration  of  Hawaii  in  1901,  Evermann 
and  I  came  across  a  very  beautiful  fish,  the  kali 
kali,  golden  yellow  with  broad  crossbands  of  deep 
crimson.  This  then  bore  the  name  of  Serranus 
brighami,  given  it  by  its  discoverer,  Alvin  Scale. 
But  the  species  was  no  Serranus,  and  it  was  plainly 
the  type  of  a  new  genus.  We  therefore  called  it 
Rooseveltia,  in  honor  of  "Theodore  Roosevelt,  Natu- 
ralist," and  in  recognition  of  his  services  in  the 
promotion  of  zoological  research.  With  this  compli- 
ment he  was  "delighted."  "Who  would  not  be?" 
he  said. 

In  the  various  natural  history  explorations  under- 
taken by  me  —  and  by  others  —  during  his  admin- 
istration, one  could  always  count  on  intelligent  and 
effective  sympathy;  and  in  so  far  as  scientific  ap- 
pointments rested  with  him,  he  always  gave  them 
Deep-sea  full  and  intelligent  consideration.  In  1905  I  was 
lions™'  preparing  with  much  enthusiasm  to  take  charge  of 
an  exploration  on  the  Albatross  of  the  deep  seas 
around  Japan.1  Talking  it  over  with  me  and 
pounding  the  table  with  his  fist  for  emphasis,  he 
said: 

1  Events  to  be  related  in  my  second  volume  kept  me  at  home,  and  the 
expedition  of  1906  was  led  by  Dr.  Gilbert. 

n  3°8  3 


1898]  Theodore  Roosevelt 

"It  was  to  help  along  things  like  this,  Dr.  Jordan, 
that  I  TOOK  THIS  JOB!" 

And  it  may  be  fairly  stated  that  under  him  govern- 
mental science  reached  its  high-water  mark. 

Our  second  meeting  took  place  in  Albany  in 
1898,  while  he  was  governor  of  New  York,  he  having 
wired  me  to  stop  and  spend  a  night  with  him  on  the 
way  back  from  Boston.  But  when  I  arrived  he  had 
been  called  to  the  metropolis  to  review  a  regiment 
of  militia  and  did  not  return  until  three  in  the  morn- 
ing. At  eight,  however,  he  bounced  into  my  room, 
scolding  me  in  a  big-boyish  fashion  for  lying  abed 
so  long  when  I  ought  to  be  up  and  doing.  During 
the  morning  we  discussed  the  Philippines,  an  en- 
tanglement from  which  he  hoped  we  could  get 
honorably  free.  "I  wish  to  God  we  were  out  of  the 
Philippines,"  he  said.  Later  he  wrote  suggesting 
that  I  ought  not  to  repeat  the  remark,  it  being  a 
matter  of  private  conversation,  which  if  made  public 
he  would  have  to  deny.  This  position  really  had 
ample  justification,  because  his  impulsive  utterances, 
torn  from  their  context,  often  gave  a  false  impression. 
As  a  matter  of  fact,  in  the  letter  to  me  he  repudiated  Anent  the 
also  an  epigram,  currently  attributed  to  him,  that 
"McKinley  had  the  backbone  of  a  chocolate  eclair." 
In  such  fashion  rose  the  famous  "Ananias  Club." 

One  other  subject  touched  upon  in  our  conver- 
sation in  Albany  concerned  the  slovenly  treatment 
of  the  American  soldiers  in  Cuba  —  especially  in 
matters  of  sanitation  —  and  the  inefficiency  of  a 
certain  general  whom  he  held  responsible.  About 
these  things  he  spoke  with  much  sharpness. 

His  real  interest,  however,  in  seeing  me  at  that 

C  309  n 


The  Days  of  a  Man  £1898 

time  appeared  to  concern  the  Civil  Service  in  Alaska, 
a  matter  I  had  incidentally  discussed  in  an  article 
for  The  Forum.  There  I  had  dwelt  on  the  sufferings 
of  the  Alaskan  natives,  due  to  the  dishonesty  or 
inefficiency  of  certain  government  officials  as  well 
as  to  the  wanton  destruction  by  greedy  poachers  of 
the  sea  otter,  on  the  skins  of  which  most  of  the 
coastwise  Aleuts  depended  for  maintenance.1  In 
this  connection  I  asserted  that  Russia  had  the  same 
right  to  complain  of  our  mistreatment  of  the  Alaskans 
as  we  to  protest  against  Spain's  treatment  of  the 
Cubans,  the  chief  difference  being  that  the  Alaskans 
were  much  fewer  in  number  and  farther  away.  In 
his  report  as  governor,  Brady  himself  had  written 
that  the  officials  of  Alaska  as  a  whole  acted  "like  a 
school  of  hungry  codfish." 

The  tennis  As  President,  Roosevelt  held  his  own  opinions 
cabinet  somewhat  in  abeyance,  being  ready  to  take  advice; 
and  men  of  progressive  temper  —  Gifford  Pinchot, 
James  R.  Garfield,  and  others  —  constituted  his 
inner  or  "tennis"  cabinet.  For  economics  and  juris- 
prudence he  had  scant  regard,  but  in  foreign  rela- 
tions he  was  fortunately  steered  by  his  eminent  and 
eminently  conservative  Secretary  of  State,  of  whom 
he  once  said,  "Root  is  one-eighth  human."  Knox, 
his  Attorney  General,  short  of  stature,  hairless,  and 
with  an  impassive  face,  he  designated  as  a  "sawed- 
off  cherub." 

During  his  administration  it  was  my  fortune  to 
visit  Washington  on  fur  seal  or  fishery  business  once 
every  year,  and  I  was  each  time  a  guest  at  luncheon 
in  the  White  House.  To  these  singularly  interesting 
midday  functions  a  great  variety  of  people  were  in- 

1  See  Chapter  xxm,  page  581. 

n  3103 


Roosevelt  as  President 


vited,  and  our  host  spoke  with  utter  frankness,  of 
which  few  ever  took  advantage.  Those  who  did 
he  relegated  to  the  "Ananias  Club"  and  never  in- 
vited again.  Concerning  Booker  T.  Washington's 
presence  on  one  such  informal  occasion,  Roosevelt 
afterward  said  to  me: 

I  never  dreamed  that  it  would  call  forth  a  storm  of  criticism, 
and  it  would  have  made  no  difference  if  I  had  ! 

At  the  last  of  the  luncheons  which  I  attended, 
he  appeared  at  his  best.  Speaking  of  a  leading 
Chicago  banker  who  had  just  left  the  room,  he 
remarked  : 

I'm  not  the  right  President  for  men  of  that  kind.  I  can't 
understand  what  they  are  after,  and  they  don't  comprehend 
me.  Pm  President  for  men  like  you. 

On  the  wall  of  the  White  House  reception  room 
hung  a  framed  cartoon  entitled  "His  Favorite 
Author"  and  representing  a  well-to-do  farmer  sitting, 
slippered,  by  the  grate,  reading  "the  President's 
Message."  To  another  guest  he  observed: 

I  like  to  imagine  that  I  am  indeed  "his  favorite  author" 
to  men  like  that.  But  if  I  were  to  try  for  a  third  term,  he 
wouldn't  like  it. 

And  afterward  to  me  : 

I  have  tried  hard  to  avoid  another  nomination  —  harder 
than  any  dozen  men  ever  tried  to  get  it. 

When  I  recall  the  Roosevelt  of  later  days,  there  At  his 
rise  to  my  mind  the  last  words  of  Steerforth  in  best 
"David  Copperfield"  —  "Think  of  me  at  my  best, 
Davy."     With  the  rest  of  his  countrymen  I  shall 
think  of  him  at  his  best.     Best  and  worst  —  that 

C  3ii  3 


The  Days  of  a  Man  £1908 

Roosevelt's  which  his  friends  most  praised,  and  that  which  his 
an7gth  critics  most  decried  —  were  strangely  mixed.  In 
weakness  my  judgment  strength  and  weakness  sprang  from 
the  same  root,  for  he  thought  with  his  heart  rather 
than  with  his  head.  Though  peculiarly  fitted  by 
nature  and  training  to  form  opinions,  these  were 
always  subordinated  to  feelings.  Where  emotion 
ran  contrary  to  reason,  so  much  the  worse  for  reason ! 
But  when,  as  in  most  cases,  reason  and  emotion 
went  hand  in  hand,  he  was  an  immense  force  for 
good. 

That  the  precepts  of  righteousness  are  largely 
self-evident  was  the  basis  of  the  common  criticism 
that  Roosevelt  dealt  in  platitudes.  That  he  put 
energy  behind  the  demand  for  right  in  politics 
explains  the  remark  made  to  me  by  Thomas  Brackett 
Reed,  "Roosevelt  has  discovered  the  Ten  Command- 
ments/' He  had,  in  fact,  come  to  see  that  those 
precepts  apply  to  political  life  as  well  as  to  Sunday 
School,  and  he  emphasized  his  discovery  with  all 
the  strength  of  a  powerful,  elemental  nature. 


As  already  indicated,  my  first  meeting  with  Roose- 
velt arose  out  of  our  mutual  interest  in  Civil  Service 
Reform,  which  seemed  to  us  both  the  most  pressing 
issue  then  before  the  American  people.     For  be- 
Tbeprey     ginning  with  the  time  of  Andrew  Jackson,   down 
Spoilsmen    trough  the  Civil  War  and  on  to  the  administration 
of  Mr.  Cleveland,  the  United  States  Civil  Service 
was  the  prey  of  spoilsmen,  the  different  positions 
being  divided  up  among  members  of  Congress  who 
assigned  them  to  various  henchmen  without  con- 

C  312  ] 


1885]  Civil  Service  Reform 

sideration  for  efficiency  or  the  public  good.  This 
condition  reached  its  worst  phase  in  Arthur's  ad- 
ministration, when  a  very  vigorous  reform  movement 
was  set  up  by  George  William  Curtis,  Carl  Schurz, 
Dorman  B.  Eaton,  Dana  Horton,  William  Dudley 
Foulke,  and  others.  With  Foulke,  a  resident  of  Fouike 
Richmond,  Indiana,  I  came  to  have  very  pleasant 
relations.  We  first  met  in  1885  when  he  was  elected 
to  the  state  senate  and  signalized  his  arrival  by 
"Senate  Bill  Number  One,"  an  act  to  place  the 
Indiana  Civil  Service  on  a  merit  basis.  This  was 
then  a  great  innovation  and  failed  to  carry  at  the 
time,  although  since  accepted  in  principle  through- 
out the  country.  And  for  many  years  Foulke  kept 
up  the  fight,  becoming  a  Federal  Civil  Service 
Commissioner  during  Harrison's  administration. 

The  nomination  of  Garfield  for  the  presidency  in 
1880  seemed  like  the  dawn  of  a  new  political  day, 
for  he  was  a  man  of  intelligence  who  had  stood  aloof 
from  political  corruption.  Unfortunately  after  his 
inauguration  he  was  violently  attacked  by  the 
purveyors  of  patronage  and  was  murdered  in  1881 
by  a  desperate  office  seeker.  His  last  words  having 
been  " Strangulatus  pro  Republica"  with  these  for  stain  for 
text  I  prepared  my  first  political  address,  "The 
Disappearance  of  Great  Men  from  Public  Life."  1 
In  that  essay  I  explained  that  the  spoils  system  had 
brought  the  "office  broker"  into  power,  replacing 
statesman  and  demagogue  alike  by  its  methods  of 
wholesale  bribery  at  public  cost.  Existing  political 
conditions  I  described  as  a  sort  of  feudal  system 
topped  by  a  "boss,"  with  the  various  minor  officials 
and  recipients  of  favor  grouped  as  retainers  next 

1  See  Chapter  vi,  page  132. 

C3I3  1 


The  Days  of  a  Man 


below,  and  those  who  vote  the  straight  ticket  as 
mere  serfs  at  the  bottom.  The  only  remedy,  it 
seemed  to  me,  lay  in  the  adoption  of  the  merit 
system  in  administrative  and  clerical  positions.  A 
competitive  examination  would  not,  of  course,  test 
the  real  worth  of  men,  but  if  honestly  carried  out 
would  eliminate  the  political  poison  involved  in  the 
assumption  that  "to  the  victors  belong  the  spoils." 

Merit,  We  are  told  that  the  merit  system  would  give  us  an  aris- 
not.  .  tocracy  of  office  holders,  a  dangerous  thing  in  a  republic.  An 
politics  aristocracy  of  collectors,  clerks,  and  letter  carriers?  These 
are  servants  of  the  people.  Must  we  keep  them  always  on 
the  verge  of  dismissal  to  humble  their  pride?  The  methods  we 
contend  for  are  in  the  main  still  in  use  in  our  schools.  Have 
we  an  aristocracy  of  school  teachers?  The  case  is  exactly 
parallel.  Clerks,  teachers,  collectors,  postmasters,  letter  car- 
riers —  the  nation  wants  faithful  service,  and  no  more.  The 
laborer  is  worthy  of  his  hire,  and  the  right  to  vote  as  he  believes, 
without  compulsion,  should  not  be  denied  him.  .  .  . 

The  remedy  lies  with  the  people.  Let  us  think  as  well  as 
vote.  I  have  for  some  time  kept  a  black  list  of  men  in  my 
party  for  whom  I  will  never  cast  a  vote.  This  list  is  already 
growing  long;  but  if  I  did  my  duty  as  a  citizen  better,  it  would 
be  longer  still.  Let  all  earnest  men,  Republican  or  Democrat, 
keep  such  a  list.  Let  us  watch  our  representatives  more  closely, 
and  guide  our  votes  by  theirs.  They  will  bear  watching,  and 
it  may  influence  them.  Already  the  pencil  of  the  scratcher  is 
felt  as  a  purifying  influence.  The  independent  voter  is  the 
one  thing  the  machine  cannot  stand.  When  the  people  are  in 
earnest  as  to  Civil  Service  Reform,  the  reform  will  come,  — 
slowly,  unwillingly,  —  but  still  it  will  come.  We  are  not 
mocked  forever. 

Two  Presidents  we  have  had,  in  these  later  days,  of  stature 
worthy  to  be  called  statesmen.  One  fell  a  martyr  to  slavery, 
the  other  to  our  deformed  Civil  Service.  "  Strangulatus  pro 
Republica!"  Slain  for  the  Republic!  And  shall  the  Republic 
stand  idly  by  and  heed  not  the  lesson?  Shall  Garfield's  death 
be  only  loss? 

1:3143 


18823  The  Spoils  System 

This  point  of  view  brought  out  some  sharp  criticism 
from  my  Republican  associates,  although  eight  years 
later,  under  Mr.  Harrison,  the  Republican  party 
adopted,  even  if  somewhat  grudgingly,  the  principles 
I  had  advocated. 

The  operation  of  the  spoils  system  may  be  il- 
lustrated  by  a  typical  incident  in  which  I  was 
personally  concerned.  In  1882  Baird  conceived  the  sume  Park 
idea  that  a  naturalist  might  well  be  attached  to  the 
staff  of  the  commandant  of  Yellowstone  Park  for 
the  purpose  of  scientifically  observing  the  elk,  bear, 
beaver,  and  other  wild  animals.  He  therefore  asked 
me  to  suggest  a  good  man,  and  I  proposed  Meek, 
then  one  of  my  advanced  students  in  Zoology.  But 
this  stirred  up  our  representative  in  Congress, 
Columbus  C.  Matson,  who  insisted  on  the  right  to 
nominate  if  any  one  from  his  district  were  to  be  put 
in  office.  Matson's  first  candidate,  however,  was  a 
man  who  could  not  possibly  accept,  being  confined 
at  the  time  in  the  Monroe  County  Jail  to  expiate 
the  social  error  of  larceny.  His  second  choice  re- 
ceived the  telegram  announcing  his  appointment 
one  Sunday  morning  when  he  was  trying  to  ride 
a  serious,  remonstrant  horse  through  the  door  of  a 
Martinsville  saloon!  This  fellow  sobered  up  suf- 
ficiently to  reach  the  Park,  but  soon  died  of  alcoholism 
at  Mammoth  Hot  Springs,  and  Baird's  excellent  plan 
came  to  nothing. 

For  the  great  improvement  in  our  national  Civil 
Service  we  are  largely  indebted  to  Cleveland,  Harri- 
son, and  Roosevelt,  though  not  one  of  them  was  able 
to  live  up  to  his  ideals.  The  McKinley  adminis- 
tration marked  a  distinct  lapse,  and  no  considerable 
advance  has  taken  place  under  either  Taft  or  Wilson. 

C3I53 


The  Days  of  a  Man  1:1897 

At  the  In  the  early  weeks  of  McKinley's  incumbency  I  had 
white  occasion  to  call  at  the  White  House  in  company 
with  James  R.  Garfield.  The  large  upstairs  room 
on  the  east  end  was  crowded  with  office  seekers, 
one  of  whom  —  a  big,  fat  fellow  —  could  hardly 
keep  from  rolling  off  the  sofa.  Another,  an  old 
gentleman  with  a  patriarchal  beard,  who  wanted  to 
be  Minister  to  Sweden,  handed  out  a  document  in 
which  McKinley  himself,  four  years  before,  had 
urged  Harrison  to  appoint  the  bearer  to  the  coveted 
place.  "But  that  was  another  time/'  protested  the 
weary  President.  Mr.  Garfield,  looking  around  on 
the  motley  assemblage,  said:  "This  room  used  to  be 
our  little  school." 

McKinley  showed  endless  patience  in  dealing  with 
the  political  job  hunter,  Roosevelt  none  at  all. 
When  the  latter  became  President,  he  made  quick 
work  of  purveyors  by  repeating  in  a  loud  voice 
their  whispered  suggestions: 

What,  you  urge  this  man  on  me,  and  then  say  confidentially 
that  he  isn't  fit  for  the  job?  What  do  you  mean? 

McKin-       McKinley's  appointments,  furthermore,  were  made 
lgy's,  .    for  the  most  part  on  a  purely  partisan  basis;    and 

method  ,        -^  ,  .f  •       i      i        i  i     i  11 

as  the  Republican  party  includes  low-minded  as  well 
as  high-minded  men,  he  thought  it  fair  that  both 
classes  should  be  represented  in  the  public  service. 
Nevertheless,  he  took  some  pains  to  see  that  the 
decent  element  got  the  best  of  the  deal.  Thus,  in  a 
certain  district  where  five  judgeships  were  vacant, 
he  appointed  three  men  above  reproach,  one  of  them 
as  presiding  justice;  but  of  the  other  two  the  less 
said  the  better. 

Meanwhile  he  was  mindful  of  his  own  political 

£3163 


1900]  General  Funston 

future,  as  one  suggestive  incident  will  attest.  In 
the  spring  of  1900,  Colonel  Frederick  Funston 
returned  from  the  Philippines  with  a  well-earned 
reputation  for  courage  and  good  sense,  somewhat 
overdone  perhaps  (as  he  himself  asserted)  by  an 
exaggerated  enthusiasm  on  the  part  of  the  war 
correspondents.  Being  an  intimate  friend  and  old 
college  chum  of  Professor  Kellogg  at  the  University 
of  Kansas,  he  came  down  to  Stanford  for  a  brief 
visit.  His  intention,  he  then  said,  was  to  resign 
from  the  army,  and  he  hoped  for  but  one  thing  — 
that  he  might  be  chosen  to  lead  the  Kansas  delegation 
in  the  approaching  Republican  nominating  con- 
vention, with  the  view  to  "stampeding  it  for  Roose- 
velt." He  doubtless  spoke  to  others  of  this  plan;  Funston's 
in  any  case,  before  he  could  leave  for  Washington,  Promotlon 
and  much  to  his  surprise,  he  received  promotion  to 
the  rank  of  brigadier  general  with  orders  to  return 
immediately  to  the  Philippines.  His  subsequent 
career  was  highly  creditable,  his  administration  of 
the  city  of  San  Francisco  during  the  earthquake- 
fire  of  1906  was  most  admirable,  and  his  untimely 
death  in  1914  deprived  the  United  States  Army  of 
one  of  its  sanest  officers.  But  his  promotion  in 
1900  illustrates  how  history  is  sometimes  forestalled. 

My  opposition  to  the   spoils   system  —  and   my  The  Mug- 
interest  in  clean  government  generally  —  led  me  to  wumps 
support  Cleveland  against  Elaine  and  to  ally  myself 
with  the  group  of  insurgent  Republicans  known  as 
"  Mugwumps."    Like  the  majority  of  university  men 
of  Republican   antecedents,   I   had   felt   a   steadily 
increasing  distrust  of  Republican  leaders  —  partly 
because  most  of  them  were  obviously  controlled  by 
certain  financial  interests,  partly  because  they  main- 


The  Days  of  a  Man  £1900 

Partisan  tained  their  dominance  by  "waving  the  bloody 
tricks  shirt"  —  that  is,  by  denouncing  the  South  for 
atrocities,  real  or  alleged.  They  also  charged  that 
the  old  Confederacy  was  still  in  the  saddle,  as  most 
of  the  political  leaders  of  the  New  South  had  been 
officers  in  the  Confederate  army.  Naturally  so; 
every  Southerner  fought  in  the  war,  and  practically 
all  who  were  fit  to  command  had  received  com- 
missions. 

But  the  great  need  of  the  nation  was  still,  as 
before,  conciliation  and  cooperation,  a  revival  of 
Lincoln's  policies  overborne  in  the  savage  years  of 
reconstruction  when  the  murder  of  our  greatest 
President  put  extremists  into  power.  However,  I 
voted  once  for  Garfield  whom  I  trusted,  once  for 
Harrison  whom  I  knew  to  be  trustworthy,  and  with 
much  internal  protest,  mental  and  moral,  twice  for 
McKinley. 


CHAPTER  FOURTEEN 


IN  the  spring  of  1886  I  was  offered  the  presidency  of  A  call 
the  State  University  of  Iowa,  whereupon  I  visited  tolowa 
Iowa  City  and  felt  strongly  disposed  to  accept  the 
offer,  for  several  reasons.  As  the  finest  farming 
district  in  the  whole  United  States,  Iowa  was  destined 
to  be  very  rich;  at  the  same  time,  with  no  large 
cities  and  no  congested  manufacturing  districts,  its 
population  rated  higher  on  the  whole  than  that  of 
any  other  state.  The  university  trustees,  moreover, 
seemed  eager  that  the  institution  should  lead  in 
educational  progress.  On  the  other  hand,  the 
faculty  was  quite  disorganized,  its  members  at  odds 
among  themselves,  and  several  were  marked  for 
removal  (more  or  less  justly)  by  the  authorities. 

On  returning  to  Bloomington,  I  found  the  board 
a  solid  unit  against  my  going.  Mitchell  and  Richard- 
son, especially,  made  it  a  matter  of  personal  appeal 
so  strong  and  so  touching  that  I  finally  declined  to 
leave  Indiana.  I  then  ventured  to  suggest  to  some 
of  the  Iowa  trustees  that  their  young  professor  of 
Botany,  Thomas  J.  McBride,  would  be  admirably 
fitted  for  the  position  in  question;  but  they  elected 
Dr.  Charles  A.  Schaeffer  of  Cornell,  my  former  pro- 
fessor of  Chemistry.  Schaeffer's  long  and  successful 
administration,  ending  with  his  death,  was  followed 
by  two  others,  after  which  McBride  succeeded  to  the 
office.  Unfortunately  he  had  then  about  reached  the  President 
retiring  age,  but  his  appointment  was  acceptable  to  McBnde 
all  interests,  and  his  brief  service  as  head  of  the 

C3I93 


The  Days  of  a  Man  £1886 

institution  (1914-16)  added  to  his  high  reputation 
as  professor. 

In  the  summer  of  this  year  I  went  again  to  Europe, 
The  attaching  myself  for  a  second  Norwegian  trip  to  a 
group  of  students  led  by  Swain.  The  rest  of  my 
vacation  was  mostly  spent  at  the  Jardin  des  Plantes, 
where  I  devoted  myself  to  the  study  of  fishes, 
especially  to  the  type  specimens  examined  by 
Cuvier  and  Valenciennes,  and  afterward  by  Agassiz. 

Those  little  low  rooms,  five  in  number  [said  Theodore 
Lyman],  should  be  the  Mecca  of  scientific  devotees.  Every 
great  naturalist  of  the  past  hundred  years  has  sat  in  them 
and  discussed  those  problems  which  are  ever  inviting  solu- 
tion and  are  never  solved.  The  spirits  of  great  naturalists  still 
haunt  these  corridors,  and  speak  from  the  specimens  their 
hands  have  set  in  order. 

in  the  Upon  my  return  from  Europe,  I  spent  some  time 
moun-  m  the  White  Mountains,  climbing  Mount  Washing- 
ton, the  highest  peak  north  of  the  Great  Smokies. 
Its  bleak  summit,  though  little  more  than  6000  feet 
above  the  sea,  carries  the  impression  of  great  ele- 
vation, rising  as  it  does  into  a  treeless  belt  charac- 
teristic of  the  Arctic  Zone. 

Speaking  of  Eastern  mountains,  I  also  recall  that 
in  the  latter  part  of  four  different  summers  between 
1878  and  1888  I  went  to  the  Adirondacks  for  short 
outings.  There  the  fine  forests  and  trout-filled 
lakes  excavated  by  glaciers  always  charmed  me. 
At  one  time  I  visited  Moriah  and  Mineville,  the 
.  home  of  my  fathers,  who  had,  however,  been  wholly 
forgotten  in  the  region.  Mount  Marcy,  the  highest 
of  the  Adirondacks,  I  climbed  as  a  matter  of  course, 
it  being  my  habit  never  to  let  a  peak  escape  if  it 
could  be  "conquered."  Marcy  is  not  lofty,  but  is 

C  320] 


The  "John  Brown  Farm 


very  interesting,   especially   by   reason  of  its   rare 
plants  and  successive  zones  of  Northern  vegetation. 

In  Keene  Valley  I  made  the  acquaintance  of  "Old  A  noted 
Mountain    Phelps,"    the    shrewd    and    picturesque  guide 
guide  celebrated  by  Charles  Dudley  Warner.  Among 
other   eccentricities,    Phelps   would   never   allow   a 
camp  to  be  made  in  sight  of  Marcy.     "You  must 
never  hog  down  scenery,"  he  said. 

On  one  of  my  several  Adirondack  trips,  tramping 
across  the  North  Woods,  I  came  out  through  the 
forests  of  North  Elba  to  the  old  "John  Brown  Farm." 
Here  Brown  lived  for  many  years,  and  here,  away 
from  political  influences,  he  tried  to  establish  a 
colony  of  freed  slaves.  Here,  too,  his  family  re- 
mained while  he  took  part  in  the  bloody  conflicts 
that  made  and  kept  Kansas  free. 

The  little  house  stands  near  the  edge  of  the  great 
woods  "in  a  sightly  place,"  as  they  say  there,  away 
from  the  sheltering  trees.  At  the  foot  of  the  hill 
the  Au  Sable  —  small,  clear,  cold,  and  full  of  trout 
—  flows  in  a  broad  curve.  Not  far  above,  the  river 
rises  in  the  dark  Indian  Pass,  the  only  place  in  the 
Adirondacks  where  the  ice  of  winter  lasts  all  summer 
long;  from  under  it  the  Au  Sable  bursts  out  on  one 
side,  the  infant  Hudson  on  the  other. 

In  a  fenced-in  plot  before  the  dwelling  John  "John 
Brown's  body  still  "lies  a-molde  ring"  —  not  even 
in  a  separate  grave,  for  his  bones  rest  with  those  of 
his  father,  and  the  short  record  of  the  son's  life  and 
death  is  crowded  on  the  elder  Brown's  tombstone. 
But  near  by  uprears  a  huge,  wandering  boulder, 
ten  feet  or  more  in  diameter,  torn  off  years  ago  by 
the  glaciers  from  the  granite  hills  that  hem  in  the 
pass,  and  on  its  upper  surface,  in  letters  which  can 

3 


The  Days  of  a  Man  £1887 

be  read  plainly  a  mile  away,  has  been  cut  the  simple 
name  — 

JOHN  BROWN 

In  the  fall  of  1886  I  was  asked  by  a  representative 
of  the  London  Zoological  Society  to  act  as  editor  of 
that  part  of  The  Zoological  Record  which  deals  with 
fishes,  Mr.  W.  R.  Ogilvie-Grant  having  then  given 
up  the  work.  The  great  distance  of  Bloomington 
from  London,  however,  made  the  arrangement 
difficult,  and  the  task  was  therefore  assigned  to 
Dr.  George  A.  Boulenger,  who  had  lately  come  from 
Brussels  as  Dr.  Giinther's  colleague. 

A  second  During  the  next  Easter  vacation,  taking?  with  me 
visit  to  mv  daughter  Edith  and  a  few  students,  I  made  a 
second  visit  to  Pensacola,  which  I  again  found 
extremely  favorable  for  my  purposes.  In  the  Grand 
Lagoon,  a  shallow  bay,  were  multitudes  of  little  sea 
horses  of  a  new  species,  hanging  by  their  tails  to  the 
eelgrass.  And  I  arranged  with  Silas  Stearns  to  send 
out  Evermann  and  Bollman  with  his  deep-sea  fishing 
boats  to  gather  and  save  all  the  small  creatures 
regularly  spewed  out  on  deck  by  the  captured  Red 
Snappers  and  Groupers.  For  in  fishes  brought  from 
the  depths  the  stomach  always  turns  wrong-side 
out  because  of  the  reduced  pressure  at  the  surface. 
We  thus  secured  many  very  interesting  species 
which  live  about  submerged  rocks  and  which  have 
never  yet  been  obtained  in  any  other  way. 

To  the  most  interesting  of  these  I  gave  the  name 
of  Steinegeria,  in  honor  of  Leonhard  Stejneger,  the 
distinguished  young  Norwegian  ornithologist  brought 
in  1 88 1  by  Baird  to  Washington,  where  he  came  to 
be  recognized  as  one  of  the  most  learned  and  efficient 

C  322  3 


1887]          College  Courses  of  Study 

of  living  naturalists.  To  him  was  assigned  the 
curatorship  of  reptiles.  In  1896  he  acted  as  one  of 
my  colleagues  in  the  fur  seal  investigation,  of  which 
I  shall  have  a  good  deal  to  say  farther  on. 


In  the  spring  of  1887  I  became  president  of  the  Evolution 
College  Association  of  Indiana.  My  official  address,  °fthe 
"The  Evolution  of  the  College  Curriculum,"  was 
much  discussed  throughout  the  state,  as  it  was  the 
first  general  formulation  of  views  I  had  often  in 
part  proclaimed  and  was  then  carrying  into  effect 
at  the  university.  These  had  their  origin  in  my  own 
youthful  experience  —  the  desire  for  scientific  knowl- 
edge which  contributed  so  largely  to  my  satisfaction 
in  going  to  Cornell.  In  my  later  career  as  teacher, 
the  soundness  of  White's  ideas  had  been  incessantly 
forced  upon  me.  With  executive  responsibilities  I 
had  adopted  and  extended  his  views  of  liberty  in 
education. 

In  my  discourse  I  explained  the  origin  of  the 
traditional  classical  curriculum  of  four  years  as 
derived  from  the  English  college.  This  was  a  course 
of  study  composed  mainly  of  Latin,  Greek,  and 
Mathematics,  ending  with  a  dash  of  safe  and  sound 
Philosophy  by  the  president — traditionally  a 
clergyman  —  the  whole  constituting  a  general  edu- 
cation supposed  to  prepare  especially  for  the  career 
of  gentleman  or  clergyman.  Continuing,  I  outlined 
the  effect  of  the  pressure  of  modern  studies,  at  first 
retrogressive  because  it  broke  continuity  and  disci- 
pline by  various  futile  interpolations.  In  such 


The  Days  of  a  Man 


rbe  dregs  patchwork  concessions  to  opportunism  1  Greek  (and 
'ater  Latin),  as  I  have  previously  explained,  was 
replaced  by  odds  and  ends  of  Science,  History,  and 
Modern  Languages,  the  resulting  makeshifts,  rightly 
regarded  as  inferior,  being  designated  as  "Science," 
"Philosophy,"  and  "Literature."  The  degree  of 
B.S.,  as  then  awarded  for  such  superficial  courses,  I 
defined  as  "Bachelor  of  Surfaces." 

I  further  tried  to  show  that  higher  education  in 
America  must  recover  its  dignity,  and  that  not 
through  the  crowding  out  of  the  Classics  with  in- 
vertebrate fragments  of  other  forms  of  discipline, 
but  by  a  well-considered  adaptation  of  study  to  the 
needs  of  the  individual.  This  could  be  attained 
only  through  the  development  and  coordination  of 
a  rational  elective  system  by  which  each  student 
chooses  his  own  line  of  work  and  is  stimulated  to 
pursue  it  to  a  degree  of  mastery.  My  argument,  I 
repeat,  was  not  that  Greek  or  Latin  should  be 
abolished  or  neglected,  but  that  ample  provision 
should  be  made  for  science  and  modern  "humanities." 
A  radical  In  developing  this  thesis  I  advocated  the  ultimate 
suggestion  abandonment  of  the  Bachelor's  degree,  and  the 
recognition  of  advanced  professional  degrees  only  — 
in  research  along  various  lines,  as  well  as  in  Medicine, 
Law,  and  Engineering.  As  a  beginning,  I  suggested 
that  all  Bachelor's  degrees  should  be  merged  into 
one,  that  of  Bachelor  of  Arts.  This  step  had  already 
been  taken  at  Johns  Hopkins  and  at  Harvard,  a 
policy  afterward  followed  by  numerous  other  leading 

1  The  theory  of  the  system   was   feelingly  expressed  by  the  learned  Dr. 
Noah  Porter,  then  president  of  Yale: 

"We  couldn't  provide  for  special  talents  and  we  had  to  give  something  the 
general  run  of  the  boys  could  chew  on;  it  didn't  matter  much  what." 

Quoted  by  Henry  Holt,  Unpartizan  Review,  July,  1920 

C  324  3 


1887]       Indiana  Academy  of  Sciences 

institutions,  although  "conservative  Cornell"  still 
confers  several  different  baccalaureate  titles.  With 
passing  years  I  have  seen  no  reason  to  change 
materially  the  views  thus  early  formulated  by  me, 
though  I  recognize  that  the  abolition  of  the  Bachelor's 
degree,  which  represents  merely  a  start  in  general 
culture,  is  much  farther  off  than  I  had  anticipated. 
Baccalaureate  degrees,  moreover,  have  one  real 
value,  that  of  identifying  and  binding  together  a 
body  of  college  alumni. 

In  the  spring  of  1887,  also,  the  Indiana  Academy 
of  Sciences  was  organized,  with  me  as  first  president, 
its  nucleus  being,  as  I  have  said,  the  enthusiastic 
local  Natural  History  Society  of  Brookville.  For  Dispersion 
my  formal  address  at  the  academy's  first  meeting 
I  chose  "The  Dispersion  of  Fresh-water  Fishes," 
setting  forth  all  that  was  then  known  of  the  various 
ways  in  which  fishes  migrate  from  one  water  basin 
to  another. 

During  the  summer  I  spent  some  weeks  in  the 
Harvard  Museum  of  Comparative  Zoology,  working 
over  all  the  marine  fishes  collected  by  Agassiz  in 
Brazil,  and  describing  the  various  species  new  to 
science.  The  thousands  of  river  fishes  in  the  same 
collection  I  did  not  touch,  as  the  amount  of  material 
was  far  too  large.  Some  of  it  was  later  studied  by 
Steindachner  of  Vienna,  one  of  Agassiz's  early  assist- 
ants; the  rest  by  Eigenmann,  whose  explorations 
of  South  American  rivers  have  been  more  extensive 
than  those  of  all  other  naturalists  combined. 

On  August   10  of  this  year  I  was  married,   in  Marriage 
Worcester,   Massachusetts,  to  Miss  Jessie   Knight,  * 
a  Cornell   student  with  whom  I   had  become   ac- 


The  Days  of  a  Man  £1887 

quainted  in  connection  with  my  attendance  at  a 
trustees'  meeting  at  Ithaca  earlier  in  the  year,  and 
who  for  thirty-three  years  has  been  my  helpmate, 
friend,  and  critic.  For  as  James  Stephens  observes, 
to  marry  a  university  woman  is  to  have  ever  after 
"a  critic  on  the  hearth."  In  these  pages,  however, 
I  may  only  hint  at  what  her  companionship  has 
meant  to  me. 

A  Miss  Knight  was  the  daughter  of  Charles  Sanford 

25?  Knight>  a  veteran  of  the  Civil  War,  and  Cordelia 
Cutter  Knight,  both  formerly  of  Ware,  Massa- 
chusetts. On  Mr.  Knight's  side  there  was  a  dash 
of  French  Huguenot  blood  which  shows  itself 
plainly  in  the  olive  complexion,  dark  hair,  and  big 
black  eyes  of  his  children,  a  feature  persistent 
through  succeeding  generations. 

Admiral  Mrs.  Jordan's  elder  brother  is  Rear-Admiral 
Knight  Austin  M.  Knight,  retired,  but  recently  on  duty  in 
Washington  as  president  of  the  Naval  Board  of 
Awards  —  an  appointment  received  with  general 
satisfaction  among  navy  men  as  guaranteeing  fair- 
ness and  intelligent  discrimination.  For  some  time 
previous  to  our  entrance  into  the  war,  Admiral 
Knight  was  president  of  the  Naval  War  College  at 
Newport;  in  this  capacity  he  made  a  signal  success. 
During  the  period  of  our  participation  in  the  war 
he  was  commander  of  the  Asiatic  Squadron  and 
senior  naval  officer  at  Vladivostok  under  circum- 
stances which  required  marked  qualities  of  force 
and  discretion.  A  man  of  broad  culture  and  re- 
sources outside  his  special  professional  field,  he  is 
best  known  as  the  author  of  "Seamanship,"  an 
exhaustive  treatise  and  accepted  text  on  the  subject. 
He  has  also,  I  believe,  the  honor  of  having  been  in 
C  326  3 


00 
ON 
00 


o 
cc 
cc 


i888]  The  Adirondack*  Again 

the  service  for  a  longer  period  than  any  other  officer 
of  the  modern  navy. 

Mrs.  Jordan's  only  other  brother  is  Charles  S. 
Knight,  Jr.,  a  business  man  of  Chicago.  One  of 
several  sisters,  Bertha,  the  youngest,  lived  with  us 
for  a  time  in  Bloomington,  where  she  graduated  from 
the  University.  She  afterward  married  Henry 
Landes,  a  fellow  student  to  whom  reference  has 
already  been  made.  For  many  years  past  she  has 
lived  in  Seattle,  where  her  husband  has  long  held 
the  professorship  of  Geology  in  the  institution  of 
which  he  was  for  a  year  and  a  half  acting  president. 

University  obligations  having  made  it  imperative 
to  return  to  Indiana  by  the  middle  of  August,  I 
planned  a  sort  of  deferred  wedding  trip  the  following 
summer.  In  June,  u888,  therefore,  we  started  for 
the  Adirondack  Mountains,  through  which  we  drove 
for  several  days,  making  the  circuit  of  Keene  Valley, 
Lake  Placid,  and  the  Saranacs,  thence  over  to 
Willoughby  Lake  in  Vermont.  This  last,  the  deepest,  wu- 
clearest,  and  most  charming  of  all  the  glacial  tarns  of 
the  Green  Mountains,  is  overshadowed  by  a  huge 
cliff  about  which  grow  many  rare  Northern  flowers. 
In  that  delightful  region  we  combined  work  with 
pleasure  by  reading  the  proofs  and  arranging  the 
index  of  a  new  and  completely  reset  edition  of  the 
"  Manual  of  Vertebrates."  Afterward,  passing  north- 
ward to  Granby,  we  went  down  the  St.  Lawrence 
to  Quebec,  where  we  delighted  in  the  atmosphere  of 
the  old  French  town.  Hiring  a  caleche  one  day,  I 
astonished  the  owner  by  dismissing  him,  mounting 
myself  on  the  box  and  driving  to  Montmorency 
Falls,  whilst  my  young  wife  sat  behind  in  state, 


The  Days  of  a  Man 


concealing  with  difficulty  her  somewhat  mingled 
emotions. 

From  Quebec,  also,  we  went  on  a  "pilgrimage" 
f  ;n  a  driving  rain  down  the  river  to  the  famous  shrine 
of  Sainte  Anne  de  Beau-Pre.  The  boat  was  crowded 
with  devotees  from  all  over  the  province,  seeking 
relief  from  disorders  real  or  imaginary.  In  spite  of 
certain  obvious  illusions,  however,  we  saw  much 
that  was  touching  in  the  simple  sincerity  everywhere 
evident.  The  walls  of  the  church  were  loaded  with 
votive  offerings  and  crutches  left  by  people  whose 
faith,  for  the  time  at  least,  had  made  them  whole. 
Unfortunately  on  the  day  of  our  visit  the  heavy 
downpour  made  it  impossible  to  carry  out  our  orig- 
inal intention  of  going  inland  to  the  splendid  Falls 
of  Saint  Anne,  and  later  visits  to  Quebec  have  been 
too  brief  to  permit  the  detour. 

Our  personal  excursion  over,  my  wife  and  I 
proceeded  to  Luray,  Virginia,  where  I  resumed  the 
exploration  of  the  Southern  rivers,  assisted  by 
Evermann,  Jenkins,  and  Meek.  Beginning  with  the 
Shenandoah  at  Luray,  the  beautiful  limestone  cavern 
of  which  we  explored,  our  party  moved  southward, 
examining  the  James,  Roanoke,  Neuse,  Cape  Fear, 
French  Broad,  Holston,  Tennessee,  and  Cumberland 
rivers,  and  collecting  several  thousand  specimens, 
among  which  we  discovered  more  than  a  dozen  new 
species  of  darters  and  minnows. 

But  the  most  important  general  result,  already 
foreshadowed  during  previous  explorations,  con- 
cerned the  parallelism  of  the  faunas  of  the  different 
streams  which  diverge  from  the  Appalachian  high- 
lands to  the  Atlantic  and  the  Gulf  of  Mexico.  In 
all  these  waters  the  same  general  types  prevail,  but 

C  328  3 


i888]          Far-reaching  Conclusions 

among  the  small,  non-migratory  fishes  —  minnows 
and  darters  especially  —  the  species  are  different, 
each  river  having  its  own  kinds,  with  their  nearest 
relatives  occurring  in  the  next,  not  in  the  same, 
stream.  Similar  conclusions  in  regard  to  fishes  I 
have  since  extended  to  animals  and  plants  generally, 
affirming  that  the  nearest  relative  of  any  given 
form  is  usually  not  found  in  exactly  the  same  region 
nor  at  a  distance,  but  just  on  the  other  side  of  some 
barrier  to  distribution.  This  general  rule  governing 
the  formation  of  distinct  species  by  isolation  or  sep- 
aration was  afterward  named  "Jordan's  Law" 1  by  Dr.  Jordan's 
Joel  A.  Allen,  late  of  the  American  Museum  in  New  Law 
York,  a  distinguished  ornithologist  who  has  instanced 
many  illustrations  among  birds  and  mammals. 

Another  phase  of  this  parallelism  I  designate  as  Geminate 
the  "Law  of  Geminate  Species"  —  that  is,  of  species 
"twin  kinds"  —  for  whenever  the  range  of  a  par- 
ticular animal  or  plant  form  is  split  by  a  sharp 
barrier,  the  individuals  on  either  side  may  ultimately 
be  different  enough  to  develop  species  technically 
distinct  though  closely  resembling  each  other.  To 
this  fact  thousands  of  illustrations  bear  witness. 
Notable  among  them  are  the  twin  forms  of  fishes 
and  mollusks  on  opposite  sides  of  the  Isthmus  of 
Panama,  which  has  separated  them  since  the  Miocene 

1  It  is,  of  course,  obvious  that  "Jordan's  Law"  is  mine  only  for  the  sake  of 
convenience,  and  because  I  happened  to  be  the  first  one  to  formulate  it.  It 
exists  primarily  in  the  nature  of  things  as  a  so-called  "natural  law"  —  that 
is,  one  of  the  many  observed  ways  in  which  life  proceeds.  It  concerns  those 
diversities  in  living  forms  which  set  off  what  we  call  "species."  The  term 
has  no  absolute  objective  definition  or  criterion.  A  species  of  animal  or  plant 
is  in  its  origin  merely  one  of  the  many  kinds  into  which  living  organisms  become 
divided;  once  established,  a  species  may  then  be  defined  as  a  particular  series 
of  organisms  giving  rise  by  processes  of  reproduction  to  a  continuous  succession 
of  individuals  not  exactly  alike,  but  so  nearly  alike  that  for  the  ordinary  pur- 
poses of  science  a  single  name  serves  for  a  whole  group. 

n  329  3 


The  Days  of  a  Man 


Period.  Equally  striking  examples  may  be  drawn 
from  the  non-migratory  birds,  insects,  and  snails 
inhabiting  different  adjacent  islands,  or  even  sepa- 
rated localities  on  the  same  island.  I  feel  little  doubt 
that  the  minor  qualities  distinguishing  species  among 
animals  and  plants  generally  have  been  everywhere 
evolved  through  exigencies  of  separation  and  iso- 
lation. Natural  selection  enforces  adaptation,  iso- 
lation encourages  differentiation  independent  of  ad- 
aptation. The  process  of  selection  affects  every 
species;  it  probably  originates  none. 

Collecting        Throughout  the  whole  trip   Mrs.  Jordan  rested 
™    .  .      and  read  in  the  shade  on  the  banks  of  the  swift, 

Virginia  . 

clear  rivers,  while  we  men  drew  the  necessary  nets; 
incidentally  we  both  enjoyed  to  the  full  the  long 
drives  through  the  summer-scented  "piney  woods." 
For  the  most  part  the  work  took  us  to  modest 
country  inns.  Occasionally,  however,  we  touched  at 
fashionable  resorts.  A  special  trip  in  southeastern 
Virginia  once  landed  Jenkins  and  Meek  at  a  seaside 
hotel  in  Norfolk.  As  they  went  to  their  rooms  to 
"sleek  up/'  Jenkins  said:  "Now,  Meek,  you  want 
to  be  a  little  particular  here.  This  is  no  backwoods 
joint."  A  half-hour  later,  as  they  sat  below  at 
dinner,  Jenkins  himself  became  the  object  of  general 
attention,  his  curly  hair  being  beset  with  tiny  fishes 
dried  in,  the  result  of  his  last  haul.  For  when  a  net 
was  thrown  on  the  far  side  of  a  stream  and  the 
catch  was  small,  it  was  our  custom  to  stow  it  tempo- 
,  rarily  in  our  hats.  That  time  Jenkins  had  forgotten 
to  remove  the  spoils  ! 

On  October  26,  1888,  my  second  son,  Knight  Starr, 
was  born,  which  happy  event  had  necessarily  post- 

C  3303 


1890]  T*he  Fishes  of  Greece 

poned  a  trip  to  Athens  planned  some  time  before  Joint 
by   Hoffman   and   myself  in   the   joint   interest   of  s^"sic 
Philology  and  Zoology.     There  I  expected  to  make  fob  and 
a  study  of  the  Greek  fish  fauna,  while   Hoffman  fishnamfs 
recorded  the  current  names  of  the  various  species, 
with  a  view  to  comparing  them  with  those  used  by 
Aristotle.    Such  an  investigation,  we  thought,  would 
afford  an  excellent  means  of  testing  the  duration  and 
modification  of  words  in  the  common  speech  of  the 
Greek  people.     It  would,  moreover,   be  peculiarly 
interesting,  as  nowhere  else  in  the  world  is  there 
available  so  long  a  record  of  popular  animal  nomen- 
clature. 

As  matters  finally  turned  out,  Hoffman  went  alone 
to  Greece  in  1890  and  brought  back  83  species,  each 
with  its  current  local  name  attached.  Supplementing 
his  observations,  we  drew  on  a  catalogue  of  the  fishes 
of  Greece  by  the  Athenian  naturalist,  Nicholas  Apos- 
tolides,  and  thus  secured  133  additional  names.  In 
1892,  therefore,  we  published  jointly  "A  Catalogue  of 
the  Fishes  of  Greece,  with  Notes  on  the  Names  Now 
in  Use  and  Those  Employed  by  Classical  Authors." 

The  long  persistence  of  popular  nomenclature  was 
clearly  demonstrated  by  our  research.  Thus  scorpios, 
scorpina,  and  scorpin  follow  closely  the  classical 
a-KopTraiva]  bopa  and  goupa  suggest  the  original  {$60$, 
and  the  Italian  boga;  phaggri  the  more  ancient 
Tra-ypo?,  whence  comes  par  go  in  Spanish  and  "porgy" 
or  "pogy"  in  English. 

One  interesting  item  verified  the  curious  obser- 
vation made  by  Aristotle  only,  that  the  fishing  frog 
jSarpa^o?  6  aXios  has  the  gall  bladder  attached  to 
the  intestines  at  some  distance  from  the  liver,  and 
connected  with  it  by  a  duct. 

IT  33i  3 


The  Days  of  a  Man 


A  village  With  the  year's  end  I  resumed  verse  writing,  but 
lost  of  a  more  serious  vein  than  in  Cornell  days.  On 
one  of  my  early  visits  to  France  I  had  noticed  in  the 
Index  of  the  Auvergne  "Guide  Joanne/'  the  alluring 
name  of  Viverols,  which,  however,  failed  to  appear 
in  the  text.  The  charm  of  the  word  —  presumably 
from  vivum,  life,  and  polis,  town  —  combined  with 
a  bit  of  mystery,  suggested  the  theme  of  a  Christmas 
greeting  to  my  wife  in  anticipation  of  our  contem- 
plated trip  to  Europe.  The  form  I  chose  for  the 
verses  was  in  slight  degree  an  echo  of  the  charming 
Provencal  plaint  of  the  old  man  who  "never  went 
to  Carcassonne/' 

VIVEROLS  * 

Somewhere  in  France,  I  know  not  where, 
There  is  a  town  called  "Viverols"; 
I  know  not  if  'tis  near  or  far, 
I  know  not  what  its  features  are, 
I  only  know  'tis  Viverols. 

I  know  not  if  its  ancient  walls 
By  vine  and  moss  be  overgrown; 
I  know  not  if  the  night  owl  calls  , 
From  feudal  battlements  of  stone 
Inhabited  by  him  alone; 

I  know  not  if  mid  meadow  lands 
Knee  deep  in  corn  stands  Viverols; 
I  know  not  if  prosperity 
Has  robbed  its  life  of  poesy; 
That  could  not  be  in  Viverols, 
They  would  not  call  it  Viverols. 

1  At  the  special  request  of  Edmund  Clarence  Stedman  this  poem  appeared 
in  his  "American  Anthology.'*  There  the  first  line,  originally  written  as  here 
given,  was  changed  by  me  to 

"Beyond  the  sea,  I  know  not  where." 

£332:1 


Viverols 


Perchance  upon  its  terraced  heights 
The  grapes  grow  purple  in  the  sun; 
Or  down  its  wild  untrodden  crags, 
Its  broken  cliffs  and  frost-bit  jags, 
The  mountain  brooks  unfettered  run. 

I  cannot  fancy  Viverols 
A  place  of  gaudy  pomp  and  show, 
A  "Grand  Etablissement  des  Eaux" 
Where  to  restore  their  withered  lives 
The  roues  of  the  city  go; 

Nor  yet  a  place  where  Poverty 
No  ray  of  happiness  lets  in; 
Where  lingers  hopeless  beggary- 
Mid  scenes  of  sorrow,  want,  and  sin; 
That  could  not  be  in  Viverols, 
There's  life  and  cheer  in  Viverols! 

Perchance  among  the  clouds  it  lies 
Mid  vapors  out  from  Dreamland  blown, 
Built  up  from  vague  remembrances 
That  never  yet  had  form  in  stone, — 
Its  castles  built  of  cloud  alone. 

I  only  know,  should  thou  and  I, 

Through  its  gray  walls  of  crumbling  stone 

Together  wander,  all  alone, 

No  spot  on  earth  could  be  more  fair 

Than  ivy-covered  Viverols! 

No  grass  be  greener  anywhere, 

No  bluer  sky  or  softer  air 

Than  we  should  find  in  Viverols, 

Together  find  in  Viverols. 

Love,  we  may  wander  far  or  near, 
The  sun  shines  bright  o'er  Viverols; 
Green  is  the  grass,  the  skies  are  clear, 
No  cloud  obstructs  our  pathway,  dear; 
Where  love  is,  there  is  Viverols — 
There  is  no  other  Viverols! 

C333  3 


The  Days  of  a  Man  £1889 


In  the  summer  of  1889  I  carried  westward  our 
studies  of  river  fauna.  Accompanied  again  by 
Mrs.  Jordan  and  assisted  by  Evermann,  Fesler,  and 
Bradley  M.  Davis  —  the  last  two  being  Indiana 
University  students  who  later  followed  me  to  Stan- 
ford —  I  set  out  to  explore  the  rivers  of  Colorado, 
in  New  Mexico,  and  Utah.  The  number  of  species  in 

Colorado  t^SQ  streams  is  very  much  less  than  in  the  Alle- 
ghenies,  because  of  their  isolation  from  the  centers 
of  distribution  and  their  greater  elevation,  two 
factors  which  exclude  the  great  body  of  American 
types  so  numerous  in  the  limestone  belts  of  the 
Mississippi  Valley. 

In  the  course  of  the  work  we  went  into  almost 
every  county  of  Colorado  and  along  innumerable 
trout  streams,  the  haunts  of  the  state's  four  species 
of  native  trout,  all  descended  from  the  Cutthroat l 
—  Salmo  clarki  —  of  the  Northwest.  These  are 
(i)  the  Greenback  —  Salmo  stomias  —  of  the  Ar- 
kansas and  Platte  (2)  the  Rio  Grande  Trout  — 
Salmo  virginalis — (3)  the  Colorado  River  form — • 
Salmo  pleuriticus  —  and  (4)  the  superb  Twin  Lake 
Yellow  Fin  —  Salmo  macdonaldi. 

A  splendid  The  discovery  of  the  last  species  was  the  most 
find  interesting  scientific  episode  of  the  summer.  Visiting 
Twin  Lakes,  a  glacial  excavation  in  the  midst  of 
the  Saguache  range  and  separated  into  two  parts 
by  an  old  moraine,  we  found  the  common  Green- 
back to  be  very  abundant  there.  As  we  were  pre- 

1  "Cutthroat"  refers  to  the  deep  red  blotch  under  the  throat  which  dis- 
tinguishes this  species  (and  its  several  derivatives)  from  all  other  forms.  The 
cutthroat  mark  is  the  sign  manual  of  the  tribe  of  Sioux. 

C3343 


18893  Scenery  of  Colorado 

paring  to  leave,  an  enthusiastic  young  angler, 
George  R.  Fisher,  —  then  of  Leadville,  —  told  us 
that  another  trout  we  had  not  seen,  a  great  big 
fellow  with-  yellow  fins,  lived  in  the  depths  of  the 
lower  lake. 

(Though  decidedly  skeptical,  I  was  nevertheless  Twin  Lake 
induced  to  go  out  before  sunrise  in  search  of  a  new  TellowFin 
species.  To  my  delight  we  caught  some  half-dozen 
fine  large  specimens  weighing  from  eight  to  ten 
pounds.  At  a  hint  from  Marshall  Macdonald,  then 
the  excellent  United  States  Commissioner  of  Fish- 
eries, we  named  the  new  form  for  him,  though  the 
appellation  I  had  originally  in  mind  would  have 
forever  associated  it  with  the  high  cliffs  and  eternal 
snow  of  the  Saguache  range,  several  peaks  of  which 
exceed  14,000  feet.  It  was  years  before  macdonaldi 
was  again  brought  in  by  a  naturalist.  Recently, 
however,  it  has  been  successfully  introduced  into 
France  from  eggs  sent  out  from  the  Mount  Massive 
hatchery  near  Leadville. 

Of  the  many  majestic  beauties  of  Colorado,  we 
were  most  impressed  by  the  Uncompahgre  Pass, 
which  leads  across  the  great  Continental  Divide 
from  the  huge  amphitheater  of  red  rock  about 
Ouray  southward  to  the  impressive,  dark,  and 
crooked  canyon  of  the  Rio  de  las  Animas  Perdidas, 
"the  river  of  lost  souls."  Every  foot  of  the  way 
from  Ouray  over  to  Silverton  and  Durango  is  wild 
and  grand  to  a  superlative  degree.  Through  Lost 
Souls'  Canyon  we  went  on  the  top  of  a  freight  car, 
a  position  which  insured  a  succession  of  unob- 
structed views. 

At  Alamosa,  on  the  headwaters  of  the  Rio  Grande 
in  the  Sangre  de  Cristo  Mountains,  we  met  a  livery- 

C33S3 


The  Days  of  a  Man  £1889 

man  who  was  the  best  teller  of  cowboy  stories  in  my 
Lost  arts  acquaintance.  Full  of  information  concerning  the 
days  of  the  cowpuncher,  the  round-up,  and  the  rodeo 
or  branding,  he  looked  with  scorn  on  newer  methods, 
ranges  set  off  by  barbed  wire,  and  stock  rounded  up 
with  "nubbins  of  corn."  One  of  his  dramatic  tales 
concerned  a  boy  whose  parents  had  been  robbed 
and  killed  by  marauding  Indians,  though  he  himself 
was  saved  and  adopted  into  the  tribe.  Years  after- 
ward, while  employed  as  waiter  in  the  Harvey 
Eating  House  at  La  Junta,  he  recognized  among  the 
passengers  of  an  overland  train  the  slayer  of  his 
parents  —  a  renegade  white  who  had  led  the  Indian 
band.  And  on  the  youth's  testimony,  confirmed  by 
others,  the  murderer  was  convicted. 

From  Manitou  Springs  I  walked  to  the  summit 
of  Pikes  Peak  —  not  a  difficult  task,  though  the 
mountain  is  14,147  feet  high.  But  the  view  is  not 
greatly  impressive,  as  the  top  is  very  wide  and 
without  precipices. 

Utah  From  Colorado  we  crossed  to  Utah,  refreshing  my 

again  knowledge  of  the  fish  fauna  of  the  Great  Salt  Lake 
basin  and  greeting  again  my  Mormon  acquaintances. 
The  political  crisis  was  then  past,  and  people  talked 
no  longer  of  crushing  out  polygamy  by  force  of 
arms  or  confiscation  of  property.  In  the  absence 
of  martyrdom  the  system  was  already  dying  a 
natural  death.1 


Having  barely  reached  home,  I  was  asked  by 
Macdonald  to  explore  the  rivers  of  the  Yellowstone 
Park  with  a  view  to  finding  out  which  already 

1  See  Chapter  ix,  page  233. 


1889]          In  the  Yellowstone  Park 

contained  trout  and  into  which  they  might  well  be 
introduced  —  an  investigation  arranged  for  at  the 
request  of  Captain  F.  A.  Boutelle,  U.S.A.,  the  local 
commandant.  On  this  expedition  I  had  the  in- 
valuable assistance  of  Gilbert  and,  as  a  volunteer, 
of  Spangler,  then  librarian  of  Indiana  University. 
During  the  course  of  a  month  we  made  a  fairly 
complete  ichthyological  survey  of  the  whole  park, 
mapping  and  photographing  the  streams  and  listing 
their  fishes. 

It  was  a  proud  day  when  I  set  out  from  Mammoth  Govern- 
Hot  Springs  at  the  head  of  a  train  of  sixteen  Indian 

•         l         ll_    1  «  »         J      11  r   11 

ponies,  locally  known  as  cayuses  and  all  carefully  in  the 
chosen,  as  we  had  stipulated  with  their  owners  that  Yellow~ 
the  first  one  to  buck  should  be  shot.  Accompany-  * 
ing  us  were  three  vigorous  guides  led  by  the  well- 
known  Elwood  Hofer,  and  an  admirable  cook.  Our 
course  lay  first  along  the  left  bank  of  the  Yellow- 
stone to  the  Great  Falls  and  the  Lake,  thence  across 
to  Heart  and  Shoshone  lakes  and]  the  headwaters 
of  the  Lewis  Fork  of  the  Snake,  next  down  the 
Firehole  with  its  four  amazing  geyser  basins  to  the 
Gibbon,  then  over  to  the  Gardiner,  and  from  there 
back  to  Mammoth  Hot  Springs.  Progress  was  often 
obstructed  by  complicated  tangles  of  "down  timber," 
the  distressing  aftermath  of  old  fires  followed  by 
winter  storms,  but  at  night  we  camped  in  grassy 
glades  with  which  the  forests  are  interspersed. 

Of  all  the  noble  scenery  included  in  our  great  A  painted 
country,  that  of  Yellowstone  Park  seems  to  me  the  cbasm 
finest.     With  the  most  beautiful  of  our  mountain 
waterfalls  set  in  a  majestic  painted  gorge,  a  multitude 
of  charming  lakes  both  large  and  small,  dark  forests 
and  symmetrical  peaks,  it  is  also  everywhere  per- 
il 337  3 


The  Days  of  a  Man  ^1889 

vaded  by  the  strange  fascination  of  its  spouting 
springs.  A  mighty  mass  of  not  wholly  cooled  lava 
which  buried  to  a  great  depth  the  former  topographic 
features  of  the  region,  it  shows  all  the  conceivable 
phenomena  which  superheated  steam  can  produce. 
Among  these  are  the  highly  varied  geysers  and  hot 
springs,  and  the  resultant  decomposition,  bleaching, 
and  coloring  of  the  cliffs.  Of  the  geysers  we  most 
enjoyed  Old  Faithful,  which  then  exploded  regularly 
on  the  hour,  never  varying  a  minute  and  never 
missing  a  shot. 

"Story  of  But  for  a  description  of  the  thousand  charms  we 
daily  encountered  the  reader  must  look  elsewhere. 
In  "The  Story  of  a  Strange  Land,"1  I  tried  to  do 
the  park  some  slight  justice,  and  in  our  formal  report 
to  the  United  States  Fish  Commission  may  be  found 
the  record  of  what  we  saw  and  the  problems  we 
tried  to  solve. 

During  our  investigations  we  had  the  sympathetic 

help  of  Captain  Boutelle.     In  one  of  our  friendly 

talks  he  showed  me  the  first  preliminary  circular  of 

Stanford  University,  which  I   had  not  then  seen. 

A  curious    In  the  course  of  a  conversation  as  to  what  such  an 

f°"~    .      institution  might  accomplish,  entering  on  its  work, 

shadowing  .  •  i          >  i  11  111 

as  it  would,  with  ample  endowment  and  absolute 
freedom  from  tradition,  the  Captain  said:  "If 
Governor  Stanford  puts  you  in  charge,  I'll  send  my 
boy  Henry  right  away"  —  neither  of  us  dreaming, 
of  course,  that  anything  of  the  sort  would  happen. 
As  a  matter  of  fact,  however,  two  years  later  I  found 
myself  president  of  Stanford  University,  with  Henry 
a  member  of  the  freshman  class.  Afterward,  when 
the  Spanish  War  called  eighty-seven  of  our  students 

1  "Science  Sketches,"  second  edition.    A.  C.  McClurg  &  Co.,  1894. 

C  338  3 


1889]  Trout  Dispersion 

to  the  colors,  young  Boutelle  was  one  of  the  two 
Stanford  men  who  fell  in  the  Philippines. 

All  the  park  streams  are  clear  and  cold,  plunging 
with  high  waterfalls  off  the  edge  of  the  lava  plateau 
into  deep  ravines  worn  far  back  by  their  attrition. 
Most  of  them  we  discovered  to  be  entirely  barren  Barren 
of  fish  life  in  their  upper  reaches,  because  no  fish  streams 
can  surmount  their  sheer  cataracts.  There  were, 
however,  a  few  notable  exceptions  which  made  the 
problem  of  distribution  a  peculiarly  interesting  one. 
This  we  first  encountered  in  Lupine  Creek,  a  tribu- 
tary of  Lava  Creek,  a  large  stream  in  which,  as  well 
as  in  Lupine,  trout  abound  both  above  and  below  a 
waterfall.  Lava,  moreover,  presents  a  series  of 
cascades  quite  impassable  by  fish. 

But  the  solution  was  not  far  to  seek  on  lines  al- 
ready familiar.  In  my  address  on  the  dispersion  of 
fresh-water  fishes  before  the  Indiana  Academy,  I 
had  suggested  that  lakes  —  permanent  or  temporary 
—  on  watersheds  may  act  as  agencies  for  the  transfer 
of  individuals.  It  was  therefore  with  a  certain 
amount  of  justifiable  confidence  that  we  set  out  on 
a  piece  of  special  exploration.  Ascending  Lupine  Lupine 
Creek,  we  reached  a  marsh  through  which,  in  time  Creek 
of  high  water,  it  must  obviously  interlock  with 
Black-tail  Deer  Creek,  a  direct  and  larger  tributary 
of  the  Yellowstone,  which  drops  into  the  valley 
without  a  cascade.  The  waters  of  Lava  Creek  reach 
the  Yellowstone  by  way  of  Gardiner  River  below 
its  high,  obstructing  Osprey  Fall,  while  both  Gardiner 
and  Black-tail  Deer  enter  the  main  river  below  the 
Great  Fall,  and  where  trout  are  naturally  abundant. 
From  that  point,  therefore,  they  have  an  easy  run 

C  339  3 


The  Days  of  a  Man  £1889 

to  Lupine  Creek.  As  to  Lava  itself,  we  were  in- 
formed that  a  similar  connection  existed  higher  up 
between  that  and  Black-tail  Deer  Creek. 
Yellow  But  the  crucial  test  of  the  problem  concerned  the 
Yellowstone  River,  a  glorious  stream  well  stocked 
with  Cutthroat  both  above  and  below  its  superb 
falls,  the  one  of  no,  the  other  of  310  feet.  The 
probable  explanation  of  this  anomaly  had  been 
previously  indicated  by  the  results  of  early  official 
topographic  explorations,  but  lack  of  time  then 
prevented  our  making  any  attempt  at  verification 
by  following  the  river  to  its  headwaters  outside  the 
park.  In  1891,  however,  the  whole  matter  was 
definitely  cleared  up  by  Evermann,  who  made  a 
special  trip  with  that  end  in  view. 

TWO  Out  of  Two  Ocean  Pass,  a  flat  meadow  in  the 

(kfan  plateau  of  the  same  name  on  the  Continental  Divide, 
flow  Atlantic  and  Pacific  creeks,  both  well  stocked 
with  trout  and  permanently  connected  by  a  cross 
stream;  the  former  runs  northeastward  to  the 
Yellowstone,  the  latter  southwestward  to  the  Snake, 
the  main  tributary  of  the  Columbia.  These  facts 
explain  why  trout  are  found  in  the  Yellowstone  above 
falls  which  no  fish  could  possibly  surmount  —  also 
why  they  are  identical  with  the  Cutthroat,  the 
common  species  of  the  Columbia  and  all  its  tribu- 
taries. As  for  their  presence  in  the  Yellowstone 
below  the  falls,  and  in  the  rest  of  the  upper  Missouri 
drainage  as  well,  we  have  no  absolute  data.  It  is, 
however,  not  impossible  that  trout  or  trout  eggs 
may  at  times  pass  over  falls  unscathed.  It  is  possi- 
ble, also,  that  other  Two  Ocean  waters  will  be  found 
when  our  mountains  are  adequately  examined. 

In   South   America   two   large-scale   examples  of 

C  340  3 


1889]        Anomalies  in  Distribution 

similar  connecting  river  basins  have  long  been  re- 
corded. In  Venezuela  the  Rio  Cassiquiare  connects 
the  Orinoco  near  its  head  with  the  Rio  Negro,  a  large 
tributary  of  the  Amazon.  In  like  fashion  in  western 
Brazil  a  cross-stream  joins  the  Rio  Tapajos  of  the 
Amazon  drainage  with  the  Paraguay  of  the  La  Plata 
basin.  Across  these  marshy  uplands  a  fish  readily 
makes  its  way.  It  is  also  reported  that  during  the 
war  they  were  utilized  for  a  hostile  purpose,  a 
matter  to  which  I  may  revert  in  later  pages. 

According  to  popular  idea  each  animal  species 
has  been  somehow  placed  in  the  surroundings  best 
suited  to  its  development.  On  this  theory  failure 
to  fill  with  trout  the  crystal  streams  of  Yellowstone 
Park  must  be  regarded  as  a  strange  oversight  on  the 
part  of  Mother  Nature.  The  real  fact  is  that  each 
species  enters  and  occupies  every  attainable  favor- 
able environment,  though  access  to  the  best  is  often 
debarred.  Pursuant  to  our  report,  the  Eastern  Bringing 
Brook  Trout  —  Salvelinus  fontinalis  —  the  Euro- 
pean  Brown  Trout  — .  Salmo  fario  —  and  the  Shasta 
Rainbow  of  California  —  Salmo  sloasta  —  were  soon 
introduced  into  all  the  important  Yellowstone  Park 
waters. 

Another   interesting   problem    in   fish    dispersion  Problem 
with  which  Evermann  and  I  have  had  to  deal  con-  °^en 
cerns  the  three  species  of  Golden  Trout  developed  Trout 
in  the  Kern  Basin  of  the  High  Sierra.    Each  of  these 
three  is  a  result  of  the  long-continued  isolation  of  a 
group  of  individuals  shut  away  from  the  mass  of 
their  fellows.     In  the  upper  reaches  of  the  Kern, 
three  of  its  tributaries  —  South  Fork,  Soda  Creek, 
and  Volcano  Creek  —  were  suddenly  blocked  thou- 
sands of  years  ago  by  a  long,  continuous  dyke  of 

3 


The  Days  of  a  Man  £1889 

lava  over  which  each  stream  then  dropped  perforce 
in  a  high,  vertical  waterfall.  That  was  a  topographic 
change  which  has  ever  since  effectually  prevented 
free  fish  migration  between  the  main  stream  and  the 
Species  three  tributaries.  As  a  result,  in  the  upper  reaches 
formed  in  of  eac}1  of  ^  iatter  has  developed  a  special  trout 
of  singular  beauty  of  color,  quite  distinct  from  the 
other  two  and  very  different  from  the  big,  profusely 
spotted  Kern  Rainbow  —  Salmo  gilberti  —  found  in 
abundance  below  the  falls.  Complicated  and  difficult 
cascades  trout  will  worm  up  somehow,  but  any 
considerable  perpendicular  drop  gives  no  leverage 
for  caudal  fin  and  acts  as  a  positive  check.  In  such 
cases  the  upper  reaches  of  Sierran  streams  are 
naturally  barren  except  where  the  trout  antedate 
the  fall. 

The  trout  of  the  South  Fork  I  described  in  1892 
as  Salmo  aguabonita  —  a  curious  misnomer  due  to 
the  fact  that  the  types  were  mistakenly  reported  to 
have  been  taken  in  Volcano  Creek  above  Agua 
Bonita  Falls.  But  the  subsequent  exploration  con- 
ducted by  Evermann  and  his  party  (undertaken  at 
Roosevelt's  request  on  the  instance  of  Stewart 
Edward  White)  showed  that  aguabonita  really  belongs 
to  the  South  Fork.  The  true  Volcano  Creek  form 
Evermann  named  Salmo  roosevelti,  and  the  Soda 
Creek  form  Salmo  zvhitei.  Collectively,  the  three 
species  are  known  as  the  Golden  Trout  of  Mount 
Whitney,  all  being  bright  golden,  spotted  with 
black,  with  orange  fins  and  an  orange  stripe  along 
the  side.  All  are  also  dwarf,  maturing  at  six  inches. 
The  fiery  hues  of  the  Golden  Trout  are  presum- 
ably perpetuated  by  natural  selection,  as  the  bottoms 
over  which  they  hover  are  of  bright  granite  and 

n  342  n 


1889]       Man  s  Part  in  Distribution 

quartzite,  red  and  gray.  But  whatever  the  cause, 
protection  from  an  osprey  or  kingfisher  looking  down 
into  the  shallow,  open  ripples  must  be  fairly  sure. 

Another  case  of  seemingly  anomalous  dispersion 
relates  to  the  presence  of  the  Lake  Tahoe  trout  — 
Salmo  henshawi  —  in  the  plateau  tributaries  of  the 
Feather  River,  a  large  stream  emptying  into  the 
Sacramento.  After  careful  consideration  of  Plumas 
County  dykes,  I  was  prepared  for  a  topographic 
explanation  of  the  problem.  Fortunately,  however,  Helping 
I  met  Mr.  Pratt,  a  local  resident,  who  had  himself  *<**"«* 
carried  henshawi  from  the  Truckee,  the  outlet  of 
Tahoe,  and  put  them  in  the  headwaters  of  the 
Feather  at  Prattville.  Recent  operations  of  the  Fish 
Commission  have  scattered  alien  species  throughout 
California,  so  that  the  Eastern  Brook  Trout  and  the 
European  Brown  Trout,  celebrated  by  Izaak  Walton, 
now  also  abound  in  the  Feather,  in  addition  to  an 
indigenous  Rainbow.  On  the  other  hand,  in  1913,  I 
found  the  Shasta  Rainbow  on  sale  at  Arlon  in  the 
hills  of  Belgian  Luxembourg. 


C343  3 


CHAPTER  FIFTEEN 


THE  summer  of  1890  Mrs.  Jordan  and  I  spent  in 
Europe,  Professor  Jeremiah  W.  Jenks  of  our  chair 
of  Economics  being  my  associate  in  conducting  a 
group  of  students  and  friends  on  lines  similar  to 
those  adopted  in  earlier  tours. 

Landing  at  Antwerp,  we  crossed  by  a  fabulously 
uncomfortable  boat  to  Harwich  and  then  proceeded 
northward  with  only  brief  stops  in  England  and 
Scotland,  as  Norway  was  our  first  objective.  At 
Edinburgh  we  embarked  in  threatening  weather  for 
Bergen.  This  trip,  one  of  the  most  disagreeable  in 
all  my  experience,  is  perhaps  worth  noticing  for  the 
"Scbak-  lesson  it  affords.  With  the  Britannia,  a  long,  slim, 
ing"  on  unballasted  craft  operated  by  an  engine  far  too  large, 
Britannia  so  that  it  shook  the  vessel  from  stem  to  stern  at 
every  movement,  all  else  had  been  sacrificed  in  the 
interest  of  speed.  Tossed  by  a  terrific  storm  in  the 
cross  currents  of  the  offshore  islands  of  Norway, 
she  was  almost  helpless.  Passengers  and  crew  — 
including  the  captain,  who  said  he  had  not  been  sick 
before  for  forty  years  —  all  succumbed;  the  trip, 
moreover,  was  prolonged  to  over  double  the  scheduled 
time.  The  next  day  the  Bergen  papers  discussed 
the  schaking  which  had  made  this  experiment  in 
swift  transit  so  distressing.  The  following  summer 
we  saw  a  brief  notice  of  the  Britannia's  wreck  and 
loss,  though  it  appeared  that  by  some  lucky  chance 
all  aboard  were  saved. 

Norway  I  myself  had  already  twice  visited,  but 

H  344  3 


18903  Norway  Once  More 

to  my  wife  and  our  companions  it  was  new  ground.  Fjord 
We  went  not  only  to  my  old  haunts,  the  fjords  of  ™d 
the  Hardanger,  but  also  to  the  inlets  of  the  greater      c 
but  less  picturesque  Sognefjord  to  the  north.    From 
Laerdalsoren  we  drove  in  the  quaint  stolkjaerre  up 
the  long  road  past  Mariestuen  to  the  bleak  summit 
of  the   Dovrefjeld,   the   backbone   of  Scandinavia, 
gray  with  reindeer  moss  and  dwarf  birches.     We 
also  sailed  up  the  deep  and  narrow  Naerofjord,  the 
vertical  walls  of  which  hug  each  other  so  closely 
that  ships  cannot  enter  in  the  season  of  snow  for 
fear  of  avalanches  on  either  side. 

From  the  head  of  the  Naerofjord  we  ascended  for 
luncheon  to  the  neat  little  inn  of  Stallhjemskleven, 
which  commands  one  of  the  noblest  views  in  Nor- 
way —  the  dark  and  narrow  Naerodal  shut  in  by 
abrupt  mountains.  Some  thirty  guests  in  all, 
mostly  American  and  British,  had  gathered  there 
that  noon.  But  the  host  announced  that  as  the 
yacht  of  the  German  Emperor  had  anchored  in  the 
fjord  and  the  Kaiser  had  ordered  luncheon  for  his 
party,  he  must  ask  the  rest  of  us  kindly  to  wait 
until  the  others  finished.  Majestdt  and  suite  were 
accordingly  first  cared  for,  next  the  marines  who  had 
escorted  them  from  the  boat  —  hungry  Anglo-Saxons 
meanwhile  sitting  around  outside,  freely  expressing 
their  opinion  of  Prussian  etiquette  and  courtesy. 

When  the  imperial  group  at  last  entered  the  The 
drawing-room  for  coffee  and  cigarettes,  we  had  an 
informal  view  of  the  Kaiser,  who  smiled  upon  us 
with  proper  condescension.  He  seemed  to  me  a 
rather  good-looking  young  fellow,  enjoying  self- 
appreciation  on  a  fine  holiday.  At  home  he  had  just 
succeeded  in  "  dropping  the  pilot/'  Bismarck,  and 

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The  Days  of  a  Man  £1890 

had  taken  the  wheel  himself.     This  was  my  first 
and  only  view  of  a  man  for  whose  personality  and 
political  career  I  held  from  the  beginning  a  profound 
distrust,  as  my  friends  can  readily  testify. 
oddeand        Returning  from   the   Naerofjord   to   Bergen,   we 
ti*  followed  the  inlets  of  Hardanger  up  to  Odde,  the 

da™'  finest  excursion  center  in  all  Norway.  From  this 
point  a  boatman  bearing  the  picturesque  name  of 
Ivor  Strand  rowed  us  over  to  the  mouth  of  the 
Tysse  (the  stream  draining  the  Skjaeggedal),  whence 
we  made  on  foot  a  visit  (my  third)  to  the  Skjaeg- 
gedalsfos,  the  most  superb  waterfall  in  Europe.  For 
the  return  to  Odde  we  walked  across  the  wonderfully 
impressive  mountain  pass  M^rfaldscardene,  which 
towers  above  the  town  —  the  long  snow  mass  of 
the  Folgefond,  parent  of  many  glaciers,  fronting  us 
across  the  Sjzfrfjord  all  the  way.  Next  day  we  went 
up  the  Eidfjord  and  Maab0  River  to  the  magnifi- 
cent V^ringsfos,  passing  on  the  way  the  deep  glacial 
lake,  Eidfjordsvand,  surrounded  by  high  polished 
cliffs  which  our  landlord  had  warned  us  were  "very 
periculose." 
On  foot  Mrs.  Jordan  and  I  now  left  the  party  at  the  F^sli 

^nn  at  t^ie  kead  °f  tne  falls?  and  started  on  foot  for 
the  reindeer  pastures  high  above,  where  we  spent 
the  night  at  a  saeter  or  chalet  called  Stor  Ishaug  — 
"Great  Ice  Hill."  This  was  a  memorable  excursion. 
Crossing  the  river  Bj^rkli  on  a  wavering  plank 
suspended  by  wire  a  few  feet  above  the  churning 
torrent  and  only  a  short  distance  from  the  52O-foot 
drop  of  the  falls,  we  cheerfully  ascended  on  and  on 
over  wide  pastures  carpeted  by  the  dwarf  birches  — 
Betula  nana.  These  tiny  treelets  cover  millions  of 
acres  throughout  subarctic  Europe,  Asia,  and 


1890]  In  Har danger 

America.  With  a  trunk  from  two  to  five  inches  in 
height,  each  puts  out  rarely  more  than  three  leaves, 
in  the  uppermost  of  which  is  enclosed,  as  in  a  hand, 
a  wee  catkin  of  flowers. 

Birch  gradation  is  one  of  the  most  interesting  Birch 
botanical  features  of  the  Far  North.  Everywhere  at  zradation 
sea  level  and  to  the  south,  the  varying  species  ot 
Betula  grow  into  trees.  Northward  and  upward, 
with  increasing  cold  and  shortened  summers,  bushy 
forms  come  in,  to  give  way  at  last  to  the  dwarfest 
of  all  trees,  the  mosslike  form  of  high  altitudes  and 
of  the  Far  North.  A  similar  degeneration  occurs 
among  the  willows,  though  the  least  willow  is  much 
larger  than  the  smallest  birch.  Higher  up  than 
either  grows  the  reindeer  moss,  a  dry,  coarse,  gray, 
lichen-like  plant,  tasteless  no  doubt,  but  satisfying  to 
the  beast  that  feeds  upon  it. 

At  Stor  Ishaug  we  were  hospitably  received  and 
regaled  on  the  thickest  and  sweetest  of  cream,  one 
of  my  former  specialties.  The  next  morning  we 
descended  the  great  cliff  walls  which,  with  magnifi- 
cent views  of  lakes  and  waterfalls,  lead  down  to  the 
Simodal,  and  there  we  rejoined  our  friends  to  row 
back  with  them  to  Eidfjord  and  thence  again  to 
Odde  for  the  last  time. 

The  final  lap  on  land  took  us  by  stolkjaerre  for  A 
several  hours  through  superb  fir  forests  flooded  with 
moonlight,  past  three  exquisite  waterfalls  that  drop 
simultaneously  on  opposite  sides  of  the  road,  across 
which  their  mists  commingle.  These  are  the  Lotefos 
and  Skarsfos  on  the  left,  and  the  still  more  beautiful 
Espelandsfos  on  the  right.  I  shall  never  forget  the 
rapt  expression  on  the  face  of  our  skydsgut  (postboy) 
as  he  pointed  out  the  three,  dwelling  on  their  so- 

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The  Days  of  a  Man  £1890 

norous  names  as  though  he  loved  them.  All  to- 
gether it  was  a  rare  experience,  lasting  until  nearly 
midnight,  when  we  reached  our  destination  —  Sand 
—  and  took  a  little  steamer  bound  for  Stavanger, 
at  which  place  we  said  goodby  to  Norway. 

On  the  Continent  we  visited  a  number  of  quaint, 
charming  places  in  Holland  and  Belgium  with  which 
I  was  already  familiar.  But  wishing  to  show  my 
wife  the  noble  old  monuments  of  the  Netherlands' 
history,  I  met  with  one  disappointment  in  Rotter- 
dam.  For  on  former  visits  to  that  city  I  had  been 
°f*hf  strongly  impressed  by  an  old  house  which  stood  at 

Thousand        .  &  J   .  r      t          /^  TV  it       i 

the  northwest  corner  or  the  Groote  Markt  over- 
looked by  the  benign  statue  of  Erasmus.  Its  windows 
were  of  medieval  type,  each  one  being  made  of 
heavy  convex  circlets  of  glass  like  bottle  bottoms. 
Its  roof  had  sagged,  its  corners  slumped,  and  it  bore 
every  evidence  of  great  age  and  trying  experience. 
Over  its  door  was  the  inscription,  IN  DUIZEND 
VREEZEN  —  "In  a  Thousand  Terrors." 

In  that  house  in  the  year  1568,  when  the  Duke 
of  Alva  was  terrorizing  the  Netherlands,  a  group 
of  Calvinists  sought  refuge  from  the  Spanish  troopers. 
Killing  then  a  number  of  goats,  they  placed  the 
bodies  behind  the  partly  closed  door  so  that  it 
could  not  be  easily  pushed  open,  while  at  the  same 
time  the  blood  of  the  animals  oozed  out  into  the 
street.  By  this  device  they  saved  their  lives;  for 
the  Spaniards,  rinding  the  door  blocked  by  what  they 
took  to  be  human  corpses,  thought  that  massacre 
had  there  already  done  its  perfect  work.  But  to 
the  cowering  inmates  the  night  was  full  of  a  "thou- 
sand terrors." 

1:3483 


1890)]  On  to  Oberammergau 

In  1890  the  house  was  no  longer  to  be  found.  It 
had,  in  fact,  been  torn  down  at  last  to  make  way 
for  a  commercial  structure.  Several  other  historic 
Dutch  buildings  had  shared  the  same  fate. 

In  Antwerp  I  one  day  asked  a  passing  soldier  the  Linguistic 
way  in  what  I  thought  respectable  French.  He  experi~ 
snapped  back:  "Je  ne  parle  pas  flamand."  But  my  * 
amour  propre  was  soon  restored.  Entering  the  great 
post  office,  I  saw  an  aristocratic  English  gentleman 
accompanied  by  a  very  handsome  daughter,  trying 
vainly  to  make  himself  understood  at  the  poste 
restante.  Sympathizing  with  him  in  his  dilemma,  I 
intervened  as  politely  as  possible  and  made  the 
required  translations  on  both  sides.  After  all  was 
amicably  settled,  the  gentleman  bowed  graciously 
and  said:  "You  speak  English  most  remarkably  well, 
sir/'  Later,  going  down  the  Rotterdam  shore  of 
the  River  Maes,  I  had  occasion  to  cross  over  to  the 
other  side.  Spying  a  boatman,  I  sprang  my  usual 
swift  formula  —  "Parlez  vous  fran^ais?  Sprechen 
Sie  Deutsch?  Do  you  speak  English?"  The  boat- 
man drawled  out:  "I  reckon  I  can  tackle  some  of 
'em;  I'm  from  Maine." 

From  Belgium  we  found  our  way  to  Cologne,  up  rbe 
the  Rhine  to  Bingen,  across  to  Munich,  and  thence  Passi™ 
to  Oberammergau  to  see  the  Passion  Play.     Like     ay 
most  other  visitors,  we  were  deeply  moved  by  the 
rare  beauty  of  the  spectacle  and  the  admirable  art, 
dignity,  and  reverence  with  which  the  whole  drama 
was  performed.    Moreover,  the  German  text  seemed 
to  me  to  have  real  literary  merit.    I  was  especially 
impressed  with  the  wood  carver,  Joseph  Mayr,  who 
took  the  part  of  Christus.     He  is  a  masterful  man 
of  great    stature    and    unusual    physical    strength, 

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The  Days  of  a  Man  £1890 

simple-hearted  and  modest  as  becomes  one  who 
assumes  not  only  the  dress  but  the  name  and  figure 
of  the  Saviour. 

Mrs.  Jordan  and  I  were  lodged  with  the  chief  of 
the  money  changers  in  the  Temple.  The  eldest 
daughter  of  the  house,  then  fourteen  years  old,  was 
called  Magdalena,  perhaps  in  the  hope  that  some- 
time the  part  of  Mary  Magdalen  might  fall  to  her. 
In  1890  she  led  the  girls  in  the  tableau  of  the  manna. 

Of  the  many  delightful  days  in  Switzerland,  and 
later  in  Verona,  Venice,  and  Milan,  I  need  again 
render  no  account.  But  while  the  others  were  on 
their  way  to  Rome  and  Naples,  my  wife  and  I 
followed  up  the  valley  of  the  Po  and  thence  west- 
ward  to  Courmayeur  on  the  south  side  of  Mont 
Blanc.  From  here  we  ascended  the  majestic  " Allee 
Blanche,"  the  "white  lane"  on  the  south  side  of  the 
great  mountain  from  which  it  appears,  as  Humboldt 
averred,  like  a  gigantic  white  "artichoke  surrounded 
by  its  leaves."  Perhaps  no  view  of  Mont  Blanc  is 
more  impressive  than  that  to  be  enjoyed  from  this 
little-frequented  Italian  side. 

Leaving  Courmayeur  after  an  unforgetable  day, 
we  drove  down  the  Dora  Baltea  to  Aosta  again, 
thence  up  the  mountain  side  to  St.  Remy  and  on  to 
the  bleak  Pass  of  the  Great  St.  Bernard,  on  the 
summit  of  which  stands  the  famous  Hospice  es- 
tablished by  Bernard  de  Menthon  upward  of  a 
thousand  years  ago.  Here  we  spent  a  shivery  after- 
noon and  night  in  the  cold  stone  building  by  the 
side  of  a  colder  lake.  The  spacious  refectory,  how- 
ever, was  partly  warmed  and  in  an  austere  way 
attractive,  while  the  brothers  were  distinctly  friendly. 
Outside,  the  great  dogs,  headed  by  the  splendid 

C350] 


1890]       Hospice  of  the  Great  St.  Bernard 

"Jupitere,"    expressed    their   noisy   interest    in    all 
comers. 

During  the  afternoon  many  travelers  arrived, 
among  them  an  Italian  peasant  with  his  wife  and 
young  daughter,  a  child  four  years  old.  Thinly  clad 
in  their  summer  best,  they  toiled  up  the  steep  path 
in  blinding  snow  which  chilled  them  through  and 
through.  Indeed,  the  little  girl,  who  held  a  toy 
horse  grasped  tightly  in  her  hands,  seemed  almost 
numb.  But  friendly  arms  reached  out  to  carry  her 
into  a  corner  by  the  fire.  Soon  all  three,  warmed 
and  fed,  were  started  out  on  the  path  leading  down 
to  their  valley  home.  A  simple  act  of  ordinary 
human  friendliness,  you  may  say.  Yes;  but  none  Aiife0f 
the  less  touching,  and  a  symbol  of  a  life  of  self-  devotwn 
sacrifice.  For  during  nine  or  ten  months  of  the 
year  things  at  the  Hospice  take  on  a  sterner  cast. 
Tempests  are  then  almost  incessant,  making  travel 
over  this  route  between  Italy  and  Switzerland  a 
perilous  matter.  Before  the  war  large  numbers  of 
Italian  laborers  employed  on  German  farms  during 
the  harvest  passed  regularly  this  way  each  year  on 
their  journeys  to  and  fro.  These  and  others  were 
often  overcome  and  lost  in  the  snow,  but  no  matter 
how  violent  the  tempest,  dogs  and  monks  are  always 
there  to  succor  and  to  save.  Life  at  the  Pass  is  thus 
terribly  trying,  and  after  a  few  years  of  it  most  of 
the  brothers  are  forced  to  leave  and  go  down  to  the 
refuge  at  St.  Remy,  while  younger  ones  take  their 
places  above. 

Joined  at  Aosta  by  Jenks  and  the  rest  of  his  party  rd 
on  their  return  from  Rome,  we  ascended  the  valley 
on  the  south  side  of  the  Matterhorn  to  Val  Tour- 
nanche  and  Le  Breuil.    Arranging  then  to  walk  over 


The  Days  of  a  Man  [1890 

the  Matterjoch,  we  engaged  as  guide  Cesare  Carrel, 
brother  of  the  noted  Jean  Antoine  Carrel,  who  was 
so  long  associated  with  Whymper  and  was,  in  fact,  the 
first  to  ascend  the  Matterhorn  from  the  Italian  side. 
On  the  The  Matterjoch  trip  ordinarily  involves  merely  a 

Matterjoch  jong  c\\m\>  across  snow  fields,  tedious  enough  but 
offering  neither  difficulty  nor  danger.  Soon  after 
we  left  Le  Breuil,  however,  a  heavy  rain  set  in;  as 
we  proceeded,  it  became  a  blinding  snowstorm. 
Struggling  along  with  increasing  difficulty,  we  finally 
reached  the  little  inn  of  Saint  Theodule  on  the  top 
of  the  ridge,  a  modest  stone  hostelry  of  two  structures. 
One,  the  original  rude  cabin,  sheltered  the  guides 
and  the  family  of  our  host.  The  other  marked  two 
distinct  periods  of  growth,  for  it  consisted  of  a  fairly 
comfortable,  heated  room  where  meals  were  served, 
and  another  section  made  up  of  narrow  bedrooms, 
each  with  a  small  window  and  outside  door,  but  no 
inner  connections. 

Snow  With  our  arrival  and  that  of  two  English  mountain- 

eers  w^°  had  a'so  sought  refuge  from  the  weather, 
the  little  inn  was  crowded  to  the  utmost.  It  was, 
however,  plain  that  no  one  could  go  farther  until 
the  tempest  should  pass.  We  accordingly  disposed 
ourselves  as  comfortably  as  possible,  trusting  that 
by  morning  it  might  have  cleared.  But  the  storm 
proved  to  be  one  of  the  severest  known  for  years  in 
early  August,  and  during  it  several  mountain  climbers 
lost  their  lives  —  among  them  Jean  Baptiste  Mac- 
quignaz,  Tyndall's  favorite  guide,  praised  by  him 
for  his  "high  boiling  point."  Fortunately  for  us  we 
were  sheltered  and  fed,  though  snowbound  for  three 
nights  and  nearly  three  days.  And  each  morning 
we  had  literally  to  be  dug  out,  as  the  snow  would 


1891]  Down  to  Zermatt 

be  piled  high  above  the  tops  of  windows  and  doors; 
and  the  ladies  were  borne  to  breakfast  through  a 
white  tunnel,  on  the  backs  of  our  stalwart  men. 
The  long  days  we  passed  in  the  crowded  dining 
room,  a  single  pack  of  cards  doing  gallant  duty. 

On  the  third  morning  the  clouds  broke,  letting  A 
in  the  sun  and  revealing  a  world  of  dazzling  brilliancy.  dazzlins 
For  those   who   know  how  great   mountains   look  u 
under  similar  circumstances,  no  description  is  needed 
—  for  others  no  words  of  mine  would  be  adequate. 
But  we  dared  not  linger;  besides,  the  food  had  given 
out  at  breakfast.    So  we  started  in  soft  snow,  knee 
deep,  to  make  our  way  laboriously  down  toward 
Zermatt,  hidden,  or  so  it  seemed,  not  far  below  the 
fog  which  held  us  still  denizens  of  the  empyrean. 
But  suddenly  the  white  floor  split,  disclosing  a  fear-  An 
some  rift,  half  a  mile  deep,  green  and  dark,  while  at  a™a™nt 
the  bottom,  far,  far  below,  we  saw  Zermatt,  hotels 
and  houses  looking  like  tiny  gray  dots  on  a  vivid 
map.     The  effect  was  that  of  the  sudden  yawning 
of  a  gigantic  chasm  in  what  had  before  appeared 
only  low-lying  fog  over  solid  ground. 


In  the  spring  of  1891  I  was  suddenly  called  upon 
to  make  a  momentous  decision,  profoundly  affecting 
the  remainder  of  my  life.     Early  in  March,  in  con- 
nection with  the  dedication  of  a  new  science  building, 
I  had  gone  to  the  University  of  Illinois  at  Urbana 
to  give  an  address  on  the  function  of  the  State  Uni- 
versity.    In  my  discourse  I   maintained  that  the  Function 
normal   development  of  the   university   system   in  °f^ 
America  is  democratic;  further,  that  democracy  has  University 

C  353  3 


The  Days  of  a  Man  1:1891 

no  more  insistent  need  than  for  men  of  thorough 

training;    and,   finally,   that   the   right   method   of 

fostering  higher  education  is  for  the  people  to  build 

and  support  their  own  universities.     This  doctrine 

I  had  been  preaching  for  seven  years  in  Indiana. 

While  expounding  it  before  the  Illinois  audience,  I 

whites     was  handed   a  telegram  from  Andrew  D.   White, 

telegram    "Decline  no  offer  from  California  till  you  hear  from 


me/' 


Reaching  Bloomington  at  five  on  Sunday  morn- 
ing, I  met  on  the  street  one  of  our  trustees,  who  said : 
'  The  Governor  of  California  is  over  at  the  National 
Hotel  and  wants  to  see  you."  It  then  appeared  that 
Senator  and  Mrs.  Stanford  had  arrived  in  their 
private  car  the  day  before,  and  were  awaiting  me 
at  the  hotel. 

My   first   impressions   of  Leland    Stanford   were 
Stanford    extremely  favorable,   for  even  on   such   slight   ac- 

and  bis  J  '  &  . 

errand  quamtance  he  revealed  an  unusually  attractive 
personality.  His  errand  he  explained  directly  and 
clearly.  He  hoped  to  develop  in  California  a  uni- 
versity of  the  highest  order,  a  center  of  invention 
and  research,  where  students  should  be  trained  for 
"usefulness  in  life/'  His  educational  ideas,  it  ap- 
peared, corresponded  very  closely  with  my  own. 
Indeed,  from  President  White  he  had  been  assured 
that  I  was  the  man  to  organize  the  institution  he 
contemplated.1 

He  then  went  on  to  explain  that  since  the  formal 
founding  of  Leland  Stanford  Junior  University  in 
1886,  only  buildings  and  land  had  been  given,  but 
that  practically  all  the  joint  property  of  himself 
and  wife,  valued  at  more  than  $30,000,000,  would 

1  See  "Autobiography  of  Andrew  D.  White,"  Vol.  II,  page  447. 

C3S43 


KNIGHT  AND  ERIC,   1908 


1891]  A  Momentous  Decision 

ultimately  form  the  endowment.  Should  Mrs. 
Stanford  outlive  him  the  bulk  of  the  property  would 
be  willed  to  her,  that  she  might  still  have  the  honor 
and  enjoyment  of  giving,  and  not  sit  idly  by  while 
others  administered  the  finances.  I  refer  specifically 
to  this  chivalrous  attitude  on  the  part  of  Mr.  Stan- 
ford, as  it  shaped  the  early  history  of  the  university 
endowment.  He  further  stated  that  the  board  of 
trustees,  already  appointed,  would  remain  without 
function  during  the  lifetime  of  either  founder,  unless 
specially  called  upon  to  serve. 

In  conclusion  he  offered  me  the  presidency  of  the 
institution  at  a  salary  of  $10,000. 

While  I  went  home  to  discuss  the  matter,  Mrs. 
Stanford  and  her  faithful  secretary,  Miss  Bertha 
Berner,  attended  service  in  a  neighboring  church. 
There  a  student  preacher  discoursed  somewhat 
vigorously  on  the  wrath  of  God.  At  the  end,  he 
approached  the  two  ladies  to  ask  if  the  five-dollar 
goldpiece  Mrs.  Stanford  had  put  into  the  contri- 
bution basket  was  perhaps  dropped  by  mistake. 
She  reassured  him  on  this  point,  but  said  she  was  A  God 
not  acquainted  with  the  God  he  had  talked  about;  ofLove 
the  One  she  knew  was  "a  God  of  Love,  who  pities 
them  that  fear  him,  even  as  a  father  pitieth  his 
children." 

After  a  short  consultation  with  Mrs.  Jordan,  I  offer 
decided  with  some  enthusiasm  to  accept  Mr.  Stan-  accePud 
ford's  offer  in  spite  of  twp  apparent  risks.     As  to 
the  first,  California  was  the  most  individualistic  of 
the  states  and  still  rife  with  discordant  elements. 
Secondly,  the  new  institution  was  to  be  "personally 
conducted,"  its  sole  trustee  a  business  man  who  was, 
moreover,  active  in  political  life.     But  the  possi- 

C355  3 


The  Days  of  a  Man  ^1891 

bilities  were  so  challenging  to  one  of  my  tempera- 
ment that  I  could  not  decline. 

First  It  was  then  arranged  that  Stanford  University 

visit  to       should  open  on  the  first  day  of  the  following  October. 

Palo  Alto     ,  T  ,  . !      T  1  u   *   r          1  •      • 

Meanwhile  1  was  to  make  a  brier  preliminary  visit 
to  Palo  Alto  to  look  over  the  ground  and  adjust 
necessary  details.  Until  June  I  was  of  course  in  the 
service  of  the  University  of  Indiana,  but  at  Easter 
time  Mrs.  Jordan  and  I  found  it  possible  to  pass 
several  days  with  the  Stanfords.  On  the  way  we 
spent  a  few  hours  in  Los  Angeles  where  I  hired  a 
horse  and  carriage  to  go  out  to  see  the  desert  flora, 
so  conspicuous  and  interesting  to  me  in  1880.  But 
the  desert  was  gone  —  much  of  it  covered  by  the 
expanding  city,  the  rest  obliterated  by  cultivation 
and  irrigation. 

At  Menlo  Park,  then  the  nearest  station  to  the 
university,  we  were  cordially  entertained,  and  the 
surpassing  beauty  of  the  Santa  Clara  Valley  just 
as  the  rainy  season  came  to  an  end  made  an  in- 
delible impression  on  our  minds.  To  Dr.  Jenks  I 
wrote  that  the  estate  seemed  "like  a  semi-tropical 
Vossevangen,"  for  the  Sierra  Morena,  its  background, 
reminded  me  strongly  of  the  mountains  guarding 
that  charming  Norwegian  village.  At  the  Uni- 
versity, the  beautiful  Inner  Quadrangle  (of  which  I 
shall  have  more  to  say  by  and  by)  was  completed 
except  for  doors  and  windows.  After  a  general 
survey  of  buildings  and  grounds  and  a  full  discussion 
of  ways  and  means,  I  returned  to  Bloomington  full 
of  confidence  and  anticipation. 

Following  the  public  notice  of  my  appointment,  I 
received  many  letters  of  congratulation  and  multi- 


1890  Organization  Details 

tudes  of  applications  for  positions  in  the  new  insti- 
tution, these  last  in  addition  to  some  thousands  of 
others  already  classified  and  stowed  away  in  a  trunk 
at  the  Stanford  residence  in  San  Francisco.  But 
the  Senator  had  quizzically  advised  me  to  select  my 
faculty  before  examining  the  documents,  as  they 
might  be  confusing.  I  took  the  hint,  and  never  even 
opened  the  trunk,  which  was  destroyed  with  all  its 
contents  in  the  earthquake-fire  of  1906. 

In  great  need  of  immediate  help  I  was  fortunate  Secretary 
enough  to  secure  at  once  the  services  of  Dr.  Orrin  Ellwtt 
Leslie  Elliott,  a  young  man  of  discretion  and  scholar- 
ship, formerly  secretary  to  President  White,  then 
instructor  in  English  and  assistant  registrar  at 
Cornell.  In  his  hands  I  placed  my  enormously 
swollen  correspondence,  at  the  same  time  appointing 
him  registrar  of  the  university  which  was  to  be  —  a 
position  he  has  continued  to  hold  for  thirty  years. 
I  now  proceeded  to  select  others  as  the  nucleus  of 
a  faculty,  naturally  turning  first  to  men  who  had 
been  thoroughly  tested  —  Branner,  Campbell,  Gil- 
bert, and  Swain.  I  next  prepared  a  preliminary  an- 
nouncement entitled  "Circular  No.  3."  Numbers  i 
and  2,  already  published  by  Mr.  Stanford,  contained 
respectively  the  deed  of  gift  and  the  addresses  made 
at  the  laying  of  the  Quadrangle  cornerstone. 

"Circular  No.  3"  marked  an  epoch  in  my  own  Guiding 
experience,  if  not  in  the  history  of  American  edu- 
cation.  In  it  I  announced  (with  Mr.  Stanford's 
general  approval)  certain  guiding  principles  to  be 
observed  in  the  Leland  Stanford  Junior  University. 
These  I  may  here  briefly  summarize. 

The  first  aim  would  be  to  secure  and  retain  teachers  of  high- 
est talent,  successful  also  as  original  investigators.    Work  in 

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The  Days  of  a  Man  £1891 


Plan  of 
organiza- 
tion of  the 
new 
university 


applied  science  was  to  be  carried  on  side  by  side  with  the  pure 
sciences  and  humanities,  and  to  be  equally  fostered.  Women 
and  men  would  be  admitted  on  identical  terms.  Eighteen  de- 
partments of  instruction  were  provided,  all  with  equivalent 
entrance  requirements,  accompanied  by  large  liberty  of  sub- 
stitution and  election,  no  fixed  curriculum  of  any  sort  being 
contemplated. 

The  unit  of  faculty  organization  would  be  the  professor- 
ship rather  than  the  department.  Each  student,  therefore, 
must  choose  a  major  professor  who  should  be  his  adviser,  and 
in  whose  department  he  must  take  enough  courses  to  fulfill 
certain  requirements.  As  minor  subjects  or  electives,  all  classes 
would  be  open  to  any  student  intellectually  ready  for  the 
work. 

To  secure  the  Bachelor's  degree,  each  candidate  would  be 
obliged  to  satisfy  his  major  professor  and  to  complete  enough 
of  other  approved  work  to  fill  the  conventional  four  years. 
The  degree  of  A.B.  would  be  given  in  all  non-technical  courses, 
that  of  B.S.  for  work  in  applied  science.1 

The  largest  liberty  consistent  with  good  work  and  good 
order  was  to  be  granted  the  student.  Religious  services  were 
to  be  provided  in  accordance  with  a  clause  in  the  deed  of  gift, 
which  prohibited  "sectarian  instruction,  but  required  the  teach- 
ing of  the  immortality  of  the  soul,  the  existence  of  an  all-wise 
and  benevolent  Creator,  and  that  obedience  to  his  laws  is 
the  highest  duty  of  man." 

In  the  beginning  at  least,  tuition  was  to  be  free  in  all  de- 
partments, and  room  and  board  in  the  two  residence  halls  were 
to  be  furnished  at  cost. 

I  may  add  that  the  major  professor  system,  since  largely 
adopted  but  then  regarded  as  an  innovation,  had  been  for 
five  years  in  successful  operation  in  Indiana  University,  where 
it  originated.2  But  there  the  choice  of  major  subject  was  made 
at  the  beginning  of  the  third  year.  In  the  new  institution  we 
tried  the  experiment  of  beginning  with  the  first.  At  the  time 
of  this  writing,  Stanford  has  just  shifted  to  the  former  plan. 

1  This  differentiation  was  soon  abandoned  by  the  faculty,  and  A.B.  granted 
as  the  first  degree  in  all  courses  alike.    In  time  also  the  unit  of  organization 
became,  as  elsewhere,  the  department. 

2  See  Chapter  xn,  page  293. 


1891]  Successors  at  Indiana 

The  Indiana  board,  with  whom  (as  I  have  said) 
my  relations  had  always  been  most  friendly,  were 
very  considerate  in  those  days  of  transition.  My 
new  appointment  they  regarded  as  a  significant 
honor  and  one  that  in  a  degree  testified  to  their  own 
wisdom  and  to  the  high  standing  of  the  State  Uni- 
versity. Among  other  things  they  asked  me  to 
name  my  successor  and  to  fill  all  vacancies  that  would 
occur  in  the  faculty  at  the  end  of  the  current  year. 

As  president  I  suggested  (for  the  second  time)  Coulter 
Dr.  Coulter,  who  had  been  for  years  my  intellectual 
"running  mate."  In  educational  meetings  we  two 
had  often  stood  together  in  favor  of  scientific  studies 
and  volitional  courses,  especially  emphasizing  the 
"element  of  consent"  in  education.  Coulter  was 
an  inspiring  teacher,  a  convincing  speaker,  and  a 
man  of  genial  personality,  whose  intellectual  force 
was  felt  throughout  the  state.  He  therefore  seemed 
to  me  the  one  best  fitted  for  the  Indiana  presidency. 
But  this  office  he  held  for  two  years  only,  resigning 
in  1893  to  become  president  of  Lake  Forest  Uni- 
versity, soon  after  which  he  accepted  the  more 
congenial  duties  of  head  professor  of  Botany  in  the 
University  m  of  Chicago,  the  only  institution  of  im- 
portance younger  than  Stanford. 

Upon  my  further  recommendation,  again  at  the  Swain 
board's  request,  Coulter  was  succeeded  by  Joseph 
Swain,  already  for  two  years  professor  of  Mathe- 
matics at  Stanford.  Swain  proved  to  be  a  very 
acceptable  administrative  head,  showing  unusual 
tact  and  patience  and  a  warm,  friendly  interest  in 
the  personal  affairs  of  the  students.  But  as  a  member 
of  the  Society  of  Friends,  he  was  soon  urged  by  the 
trustees  of  Swarthmore  College  to  undertake  the 

C  359  3 


The  Days  of  a  Man  £1891 

affairs  of  that  institution.  To  this  he  assented  on 
condition  that  a  large  additional  endowment  should 
be  raised.  The  amount  being  promptly  subscribed, 
he  resigned  from  Indiana  to  accept  the  position  at 
Swarthmore,  which  he  still  continues  to  hold.  He 
has  also  taken  a  very  active  part  in  the  work  of  the 
National  Education  Association  —  of  which  he  was 
president  in  1914  —  as  well  as  in  the  movement  for 
international  peace. 

Bryan  With  Swain's  withdrawal  the  board  once  more 

appealed  to  me.  This  time  I  advised  the  appoint- 
ment of  Dr.  Bryan,  under  whose  inspiring  leadership 
the  institution  has  continued  to  forge  ahead.  In 
one  of  its  recent  registers  I  note  that  each  of  the 
ninety-two  counties  of  the  state  is  well  represented 
at  Bloomington.  When  I  became  president,  not 
more  than  twenty  had  even  one  student  there. 

In  the  Indiana  faculty  several  vacancies  had,  of 

course,  been  created  by  the  resignation  of  those  men 

who  were  to  follow  me  to  Stanford.     One  or  two 

others   had   meanwhile   been   called   elsewhere.     I 

therefore  drew  on  my  list  of  eligibles  and  without 

delay  selected  good  men  for  all  the  vacant  places. 

East  in          In  June,  at  the  close  of  the  collegiate  year,  ac- 

search  of     companied  by  Swain  and  Jenkins,  the  latter  having 

professors      ,          r     ,  ,    J  .  .       J      .  .'     .          <•  T\I        •    t 

been  already  appointed  to  the  chair  of  Physiology 
at  Stanford,  I  went  East  in  search  of  more  pro- 
fessors. We  thus  visited  Cornell,  Harvard,  Johns 
Hopkins,  and  other  institutions.  Swain,  as  the 
reader  may  remember,  is  a  giant  in  stature.  In  the 
Delta  Upsilon  Lodge  at  Cornell  we  heard  an  old 
song  revived  with  a  new  allusion : 

Why  is  there  but  one  Professor  Swain? 
There's  only  room  for  one. 

£3603 


1891]  Leaving  for  California 

Jenkins  served  as  a  humorous  critic.  At  the 
hotel  in  Boston,  I  remarked  on  the  "great  head" 
of  water  as  it  issued  from  the  faucets.  "Yes/' 
said  he,  "there's  a  'great  head'  on  everything  here." 
At  Yale  (where  we  did  not  make  our  presence  known) 
we  read  on  a  moss-grown  wall  a  notice  requiring  all 
members  of  the  sophomore  class  to  assemble  in  a 
certain  room  at  a  certain  time  on  penalty  of  forfeit- 
ing six  marks.  "Now,"  observed  Jenkins  again, 
"if  that  meant  six  German  marks,  we  could  under- 
stand they  were  dealing  with  men  and  not  with 
little  boys." 

After  my  return  to  Bloomington,  I  started  hope-  An 
fully  for  California  with  my  wife  and  children, 
accompanied  by  Dr.  Elliott,  Dr.  George  M.  Richard- 
son, professor-elect  in  Chemistry,  and  their  families. 
It  was,  however,  with  considerable  regret  that  I 
left  the  institution  I  had  striven  so  hard  to  build  up, 
and  the  state  which  had  shown  me  so  much  of  its 
good  will.  Moreover,  though  geographically  and 
scientifically  I  already  knew  California  well,  from 
the  standpoint  of  educational  management  it  was 
for  me  an  untried  and  hazardous  field.  So  far  as 
friends  were  concerned,  also,  we  then  had  very  few 
on  the  Coast,  and  we  were  leaving  many  faithful  ones 
behind.  At  the  farewell  dinner  given  me  by  the 
Men's  Club  of  Indianapolis,  at  which  I  was  asked 
to  sum  up  my  views  of  higher  education,  I  closed 
with  the  following:  "I  am  going  away  expecting  to 
ride  a  very  high  horse.  If  I  come  back  on  foot,  I 
shall  hope  to  find  you  still  friendly  and  hospitable." 
But  as  I  had  previously  written  to  Dr.  White,  I  was 
prepared  to  take  whatever  came,  quoting  from  the 
"Lay  of  Ulrich  von  Hutten": 

IT  361  3 


The  Days  of  a  Man  £1891 

Icb  bob's  gewagt  mit  Sinnen, 
Und  trag*  dessnocb  kein  Reu. 

With  open  eyes  I  have  dared  it, 
To  cherish  no  regret. 

NOTE 

My  readers  will  perhaps  pardon  me  for  inserting  here  the 
following  extract  from  an  address  of  Dr.  Evermann  before  the 
Indiana  Academy  of  Sciences,  in  1916: 

"The  greatest  impetus  ever  given  to  zoological  research 
and  investigation  in  Indiana  occurred  when  David  Starr 
Jordan  came  to  Indianapolis  in  1874  as  a  teacher  of  natural 
history  in  the  high  school  of  that  city.  He  was  then  a  young 
man  scarcely  out  of  his  teens,  of  great  physical  and  mental 
vigor,  with  unbounded  energy  and  enthusiasm,  and  already 
appreciative  of  the  richness  of  the  fauna  and  flora  of  the  state. 

"The  twelve  years  (1879-91)  spent  by  Dr.  Jordan  at  Indiana 
University  were  among  the  most  productive  of  his  life,  not 
only  in  relation  to  zoological  science  in  general  but  to  zoology 
in  Indiana  in  particular.  The  influence  upon  the  state  was 
epoch-making.  The  effect  of  training  so  many  of  its  young 
men  and  women  in  the  method  of  science  and  sending  them  out 
over  the  state  and  beyond  its  borders  imbued  with  the  spirit 
of  the  real  naturalist  who  seeks  truth,  who  sees  things  as  they 
are,  and  who  knows  animals  when  he  meets  them  in  the  open, 
cannot  be  overestimated.  Many  and  varied  were  the  problems 
in  zoological  science  that  these  young  men  and  women  in- 
vestigated, studied,  and  attempted  to  solve.  They  were  by 
no  means  confined  to  the  fauna  of  Indiana.  In  Ichthyology 
their  field  was  world-wide.  It  is  true,  however,  that  the  rich- 
ness of  the  Indiana  fauna  appealed  to  many  of  these  young 
naturalists,  and  zoological  literature  has  been  greatly  enriched 
by  their  contributions." 


c  3623 


BOOK   THREE 

1891-1899 


CHAPTER  SIXTEEN 


I  MUST  now  go  back  a  little  to  catch  up  some  loose 
threads  in  my  narrative  —  that  is,  to  speak  of  the 
special  facts  instrumental  in  the  foundation  of  the 
university  to  which  I  had  been  called  as  head. 

In  the  year  1885  Senator  Leland  Stanford,  a 
former  governor  of  California  and  one  of  the  four 
builders  and  owners  of  the  Central  Pacific  and 
Southern  Pacific  railways,  made  public  his  generous 
plans  for  a  new  institution  of  the  higher  learning  in 
California.  These  had  originated  in  the  shadow  of 
a  great  sorrow.  On  March  13,  1884,  his  only  child, 
young  Leland  Stanford  Junior,  a  lad  of  sixteen,  died 
in  Florence  of  what  was  then  called  "Roman  fever." 
After  a  long  and  dreary  night,  the  stricken  father 
awoke  with  these  words  on  his  lips:  "The  children 
of  California  shall  be  my  children."  And  from  that 
moment  the  question  was  simply  as  to  what  form 
the  noble  service,  transmuted  out  of  pain,  should 
assume.1 

For  some  time  previous  to  his  death  young  Leland 
had  been  enthusiastically  gathering  objects  of  art 

1  In  the  fall  of  1891  it  was  stated  in  certain  quarters  that  Stanford  Uni- 
versity had  been  founded  under  spiritualistic  influences,  and  a  claim  was  put 
forward  in  the  name  of  Maud  Lord  Drake,  a  somewhat  noted  medium  of  the 
time,  that  she  had  been  the  guiding  intermediary.  In  1892,  therefore,  Mr. 
and  Mrs.  Stanford  dictated  to  me  the  following  statement  for  permanent 
preservation: 

"  Mr.  Stanford  made  his  will,  looking  to  the  endowment  of  the  university, 
in  Paris,  April  24,  1884.  Mrs.  Stanford  made  her  will  also,  and  copies  were 
sent  to  America.  Mrs.  Maud  Lord  Drake  was  unknown  to  them  until  they 
met  her  at  a  seance  with  the  Grants  in  October,  1884.  At  about  that  time 
Mrs.  Drake  was  detected  in  fraud."  Mrs.  Stanford  further  said:  "No  spirit- 

1:365:1 


"The  Days  of  a  Man  £1885 

and  curiosity  for  a  small  private  collection,  the  nu- 
cleus of  a  great  museum  he  meant  some  day  to  give 
to  the  city  of  San  Francisco.  Naturally,  then,  his 
parents  first  thought  of  carrying  out  the  boy's  own 
purpose,  though  on  a  more  elaborate  scale,  with 
large  provision  for  educational  facilities,  lectures, 
and  the  like.  The  idea,  however,  did  not  satisfy 
them  as  being  sufficiently  generous.  Ultimately  Mrs. 
Stanford  fulfilled  young  Leland's  general  intentions 
as  a  small  part  of  their  benefaction  to  the  youth, 
not  alone  of  California,  but  of  the  whole  wide  world 
as  well. 

Plans  for  The  museum  project  being  set  aside,  their  choice 
endow  now  lay  between  endowing  a  university  or  a  great 
technical  school.  If  the  former,  should  they  found 
an  entirely  independent  institution,  or  should  the 
money  be  given  in  some  form  or  other  to  the  Uni- 
versity of  California?  The  latter  alternative  was 
soon  rejected,  however,  because  the  management  of 
the  state  institution  appeared  to  be  deeply  entangled 
in  partisan  politics  —  a  fact  quite  obvious  to  Mr. 
Stanford,  as  once  when  he  had  been  appointed  trus- 
tee by  the  governor,  the  legislature,  then  controlled 
by  a  clique  within  the  Democratic  party,  refused  to 
endorse  his  name.  Though  to  some  extent  a  poli- 
tician himself,  he  felt  that  party  differences  had  no 
legitimate  concern  with  education.  And  in  the  end, 

ualistic  influence  affected  the  decision.  Mrs.  Drake  had  no  more  to  do  with 
it  than  a  babe  unborn." 

It  is,  however,  true  that  both  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Stanford  were  for  some  time 
deeply  interested  in  certain  phases  of  spiritualism  which  seemed  perhaps  to 
give  the  basis  for  a  demonstrable  belief  in  immortality,  a  faith  in  which  they 
found  great  consolation.  Accompanied  by  General  and  Mrs.  Grant  they 
attended  several  seances  in  Washington,  though  they  never  received  through 
mediums  any  evidence  they  regarded  as  convincing. 

r.  3663 


1 886]  The  New  University 

after  consultation  with  White,  Eliot,  Oilman,  Walker, 
and  others,  the  bereaved  parents  decided  to  found 
the  Leland  Stanford  Junior  University,  located  in 
the  country  about  thirty  miles  south  of  San  Fran- 
cisco, on  the  beautiful  Palo  Alto  Ranch  which  the  , 
boy  had  known  and  loved.1 

The  founding  grant  having  been  executed  on  Laying 
November  n,  1886,  a  board  of  trustees  2  was  chosen, 
mainly  from  Mr.  Stanford's  personal  friends,  and 
the  corner  stone  of  the  Inner  Quadrangle  was  laid 
on  May  14,  1887,  the  anniversary  of  the  boy's  birth. 
A  formal  address  was  then  made  by  the  founder, 
setting  forth  the  general  purposes  of  the  institution, 
and  from  that  time  on  construction  of  the  first  build- 
ings —  the  Inner  Quadrangle,  Engineering  Shops, 
Men's  Dormitory,  and  Museum  —  proceeded  with 
enthusiasm  and  vigor. 

By  the  winter  of  1890  Mr.  Stanford  felt  that  he 
could  now  prepare  for  the  formal  opening.  Natu- 
rally, also,  he  was  anxious  to  see  work  started  in  his 
own  lifetime,  and  he  had  already  begun  to  feel  the 
warnings  of  age.  Moreover,  as  he  told  me,  boards 
of  trustees  are  often  dilatory  in  the  execution  of 
trusts,  but,  a  project  once  under  way,  they  could 
not  do  otherwise  than  support  it. 

1  President  Eliot  had  warned  them  that  a  university  was  a  very  expensive 
thing;   that  they  should  not  think  of  an  endowment  of  less  than  five  millions 
of  dollars.    But  as  the  Senator  rated  his  property  at  over  thirty  millions,  and 
expected  to  devote  it  all,  he  thought  the  requirement  could  be  easily  met! 

From  a  personal  letter  from  Dr.  Eliot  in  response  to  my  request  for  definite 
information  as  to  that  interview,  I  quote  as  follows: 

"  Mrs.  Stanford  looked  grave;  but  after  an  appreciable  interval  Mr.  Stan- 
ford said  with  a  smile:  'Well,  Jane,  we  could  manage  that,  couldn't  we?'  And 
Mrs.  Stanford  nodded." 

2  As  already  stated,  this  body  was  not  to  function  during  the  lifetime  of 
either  Mr.  or  Mrs.  Stanford,  unless  specially  called  upon  to  do  so. 

C367  3 


The  Days  of  a  Man  £1891 

Seeking  In  order,  therefore,  to  proceed  intelligently,  the 
Stanfords  again  visited  several  different  institutions 
of  advanced  learning — Johns  Hopkins,  Harvard,  the 
Massachusetts  Institute  of  Technology,  and  Cornell. 
Johns  Hopkins  pleased  them  especially  because  of 
its  well-deserved  reputation  for  research,  while  Dr. 
Oilman,  its  head,  they  had  known  and  admired  as 
president  of  the  University  of  California.  General 
Francis  A.  Walker  of  the  Massachusetts  Institute  of 
Technology  was  one  of  their  special  friends,  and  as 
a  valued  adviser  had  spent  a  month  with  them  at 
Palo  Alto. 

Cornell  met  Mr.  Stanford's  educational  ideals 
more  fully  than  any  other  institution,  primarily  be- 
cause it  gave  to  the  applied  sciences,  engineering, 
and  agriculture  the  same  academic  valuation  and 
support  as  to  the  humanist  studies,  braced  by  equal 
attention  to  the  securing  of  first-rate  teachers.  Mr. 
Stanford  also  held  the  opinions  of  ex-President 
White  in  very  high  esteem,  having  often  applied  to 
him  for  guidance  and  inspiration.  On  the  occasion 
in  question,  he  offered  White  the  presidency  of 
Stanford  University.  Concerning  this  matter  the 
latter  writes  in  his  Autobiography,  in  part,  as  follows: 

An  offer  This  [position]  I  had  felt  obliged  to  decline.  I  said  to  them 
declined  that  the  best  years  of  my  life  had  been  devoted  to  building 
up  two  universities  —  Michigan  and  Cornell  —  and  that  not 
all  the  treasures  of  the  Pacific  Coast  would  tempt  me  to  begin 
with  another;  that  this  feeling  was  not  due  to  a  wish  to  evade 
my  duty,  but  to  a  conviction  that  my  work  of  that  sort  was 
done. 

Being  thereupon  asked  to  suggest  some  one  else 
for  the  place,  White  recommended  me,  and  the  Stan- 

C  368  3 


18913  The  Old  Farm 

fords    accordingly    came    to    Bloomington    for   the 
interview  I   have   duly  described   in   earlier  pages. 


The  Palo  Alto  Ranch  took  its  descriptive  name  of  The  tail 
"tall"  or  "high  tree"  from  a  weatherbeaten  old  iree 
Redwood  —  Sequoia  sempervirens  —  long  a  noted 
landmark  for  the  traveler,  which  still  stands  on  the 
bank  of  San  Francisquito  Creek,  at  the  extreme 
north  corner  of  the  estate.  This  is  about  nine  feet  in 
diameter  at  the  base,  over  a  hundred  feet  high,  and 
some  950  years  old.  With  the  opening  of  Stanford 
University  it  was  chosen  as  the  most  fitting  symbol 
for  the  official  seal.  Originally  one  of  two,  it  sturdily 
withstood  the  freshet  consequent  to  a  very  high  rain- 
fall which  undermined  its  mate  some  years  before 
our  arrival.  But  on  the  basis  of  a  count  of  the  body 
rings  in  the  fallen  twin,  it  was  possible  to  approxi- 
mate the  survivor's  age. 

Even  as  early  as  March  26,  1776,  these  two  Red- 
woods played  their  part  in  history;  for  it  is  related 
that  on  that  day  Lieutenant-Colonel  Juan  Bautista 
Anza  gave  the  name  "Palo  Alto"  to  the  Indian 
Rancheria  on  the  Arroyo  de  San  Francisquito,  be- 
cause of  a  tree  which  as  seen  from  a  distance  "rises 
like  a  tower  above  the  surrounding  trees."  Thus 
viewed,  the  pair  would  no  doubt  have  seemed 
blended  into  one. 

The  original  Palo  Alto  property  was  acquired  by 
Mr.  Stanford  in  1870  from  th*e  estate  of  George 
Gordon,  a  business  man  of  San  Francisco,  who  in 
1863  bought  out  several  squatters  on  what  had 
been  the  large  ranch  of  Antonino  Buelna,  the  first 

C3693 


The  Days  of  a  Man  [1891 

settler,  secured  in  1837.  It  then  comprised  two 
Spanish  grants,  the  Rancho  de  San  Francisquito,  a 
level  area  on  which  the  University  stands,  and  the 
Rancho  del  Rincon  de  San  Francisquito,  compris- 
Tbt  ing  the  hills  to  the  southward.  Later,  to  provide 
University  an  adequate  campus,  Mr.  Stanford  bought  also  the 
"Matadero  Ranch"  lying  to  the  southeast,  the 
Coon  Farm  ("Adelante")  at  the  junction  of  Los 
Trancos  and  San  Francisquito  creeks,  and  the 
"Rancho  de  los  Trancos"  (Felt  Farm)  higher  up 
on  the  stream  from  which  it  took  its  name.  In  the 
original  deed  of  gift,  the  whole  estate,  now  com- 
prising 8940  acres,  was  made  the  inalienable  prop- 
erty of  the  University.  And  while  most  of  it  is  ordi- 
nary farm  land,  it  will  ultimately  have  large  value 
for  residence  purposes,  as  with  the  growth  of  San 
Francisco  the  demand  for  suburban  homes  will 
greatly  increase. 

In  addition  to  the  campus  estate,  the  deed  of  gift 
also  ceded  to  the  University  the  Vina  Ranch  (Tehama 
County)  of  55,000  acres,  considered  the  finest  large 
farm  in  the  state,  and  including  a  vineyard  of  4000 
acres  in  connection  with  which  Stanford  carried  on 
experiments  in  wine-making,  and  the  Gridley  Ranch 
(Butte  County)  of  21, coo  acres.  These  two  prop- 
erties were  at  first  also  made  inalienable,  but  the 
clause  concerning  them  was  afterward  rescinded  by 
Mrs.  Stanford,  and  all  the  land  (except  of  course  the 
Palo  Alto  tract)  has  now  (1920)  been  sold. 

On  the  home  ranch  were  reared  and  trained  the 
splendid  horses  in  which  Stanford  delighted,  and  in 
the  breeding  and  training  of  which  he  had  for  years 
been  deeply  interested.  Planning  beforehand  the 
theoretical  type  he  wanted,  he  bred  to  that  ideal 

C3703 


1891]         A  Successful  Experiment 

standard.  His  method  was  to  cross  the  Kentucky  The  fine 
racehorse,  sleek,  slender,  and  fine-limbed,  with  the  a£ff 
large  and  strong  British  "Thoroughbred,"  reputed  breeding 
to  be  descended  from  Arabian  stock.  In  this  effort 
he  was  wholly  successful,  several  of  his  animals 
carrying  off  the  highest  honors  of  their  time.  To 
their  owner  they  seemed  almost  human  also,  so 
thoroughly  did  he  understand  and  love  them.  Sunol, 
a  famous  young  mare,  was  relinquished  for  $40,000, 
but  the  sale  (in  1892)  of  Arion,  the  superb  young 
stallion,  at  $125,000,  was  a  real  grief  to  him;  indeed, 
he  had  purposely  set  the  price  at  what  he  thought  a 
prohibitive  figure.  He  afterward  refused  $150,000 
for  Advertiser,  an  older  stallion,  announcing  him  as 
"not  for  sale."  Palo  Alto,  a  magnificent  creature 
which  had  trotted  a  mile  in  2.o8f  on  November  17, 
1891,  he  declined  to  let  go  for  the  sum  of  $100,000, 
declaring  that  a  million  would  not  buy  him!  And 
when  Palo  Alto  died,  in  July,  1893,  most  of  us  felt 
it  in  some  sense  a  personal  loss. 

Stanford  used  to  spend  hours  at  a  time  watching  Motions 
the  horses  as  they  sped  around  his  private  track. 
Thus  absorbed  one  day,  the  thought  came  that  it 
might  be  possible  to  make  an  elaborate  series  ot 
instantaneous  photographs  which  should  record  in 
detail  the  several  stages  in  the  fleet  movements  of 
a  racer.  To  that  end,  he  secured  the  services  of 
Eadweard  Muybridge,  a  clever  English  photog- 
rapher, who  by  a  special  device  produced  a  long 
succession  of  pictures  disclosing  each  motion  in 
trotting  and  running.  Those  experiments  made 
earliest  use  of  the  methods  out  of  which  has  been 
developed  the  cinema  or  moving-picture  film.  The 
details  in  human  progression  also  were  shown  in  a 

£371:1 


"The  Days  of  a  Man  £1891 

supplementary    series,    the    whole    being    privately 
printed. 

ne  kin-  One  of  the  interesting  features  of  the  Farm  was 
dergarun  "  the  kindergarten,"  a  trotting  track  for  young  colts 
on  which  they  were  taught  to  maintain  the  proper 
gait  from  the  beginning,  and  which  thus  served  as 
basis  for  an  orderly  and  progressive  training.  With 
a  somewhat  similar  notion  in  regard  to  human  edu- 
cation Mr.  Stanford  often  dallied,  imagining  a  school 
which  should  receive  only  a  limited  number  of  chil- 
dren and  train  them  continuously  from  kindergarten 
to  university.  The  suggestion  stirred  up  a  certain 
amount  of  ridicule,  but  it  held  more  than  a  modi- 
cum of  sound  sense,  although  it  overlooked  the 
necessity  of  a  broader  range  of  environment  for  the 
human  colt. 

During  Stanford's  lifetime,  notwithstanding  the 
occasional  sale  of  a  record  maker  at  a  fabulous  sum, 
maintenance  of  the  Stock  Farm  was  a  costly  experi- 
ment, even  though  justified  by  the  pleasure  it  gave 
its  owner  and  the  scientific  results  he  achieved. 
Sde  of  After  his  death,  pressure  of  financial  difficulties  (due 
the  stud  to  matters  I  shall  later  discuss)  made  it  necessary 
in  1896  to  sell  the  whole  stud  for  whatever  it  might 
bring.  Obviously  the  University  was  in  no  position 
to  speed  horses  on  the  turf,  the  only  method  of 
establishing  their  rank  in  the  racing  world  and  con- 
sequently their  financial  value. 


Architecturally  the  buildings  of  Stanford  Uni- 
versity are  of  a  type  happily  derived,  though  with 
some  difference  in  detail,  from  the  Franciscan 


The  Architectural  Motive 


Missions  of  California,  that  of  San  Juan  Capistrano 
(as  already  stated)  having  doubtless  furnished  the 
acceptable  motive. 

Encina  Hall,  a  massive  stone  building  accommo- 
dating  over  300  students,  though  related  to  the  rest  Hdl 
by  some  characteristic  details,  had  a  different  in- 
ception. In  general  elevation  it  repeats  on  a  large 
scale  that  of  a  finely  situated  hotel  at  Silva  Plana 
in  the  Swiss  Engadine,  where  the  Stanfords  once 
spent  a  happy  holiday. 

The  fortunate  conception  of  a  double  quadrangle, 
a  striking  architectural  triumph,  is  due  to  Charles 
Allerton  Coolidge,  a  gifted  disciple  and  associate  Stanford 
of  Henry  Hobbs  Richardson,  the  most  distinguished  University 
American  architect  of  his  time.     For  the  satisfying 
beauty  of  the  Memorial  Church  in  its  original  form, 
credit  is  due  Mr.  Clinton  Day  of  Oakland,  who 
was  singularly  successful  in  bringing  this  somewhat 
divergent  structure  into  pleasing  harmony  with  the 
general  group. 

Before  submitting  his  designs  Mr.  Coolidge  made 
a  thorough  study  of  the  mission  buildings  still  ex- 
tant, as  a  basis  for  the  completed  plan  subsequently 
evolved  by  him.  His  firm,  Shepley,  Rutan  and 
Coolidge  (successors  to  Richardson),  now  being 
commissioned  to  go  ahead  with  the  matter,  Mr. 
Coolidge  himself  largely  superintended  the  con- 
struction of  the  Inner  Quadrangle  and  Encina  Hall. 
The  Outer  Quadrangle,  finished  in  1900,  follows 
closely,  though  not  absolutely,  the  sketches  origi- 
nally submitted. 

"The  main  group,  composed  thus  of  two  quad- 
rangles, one  surrounding  the  other,  reproduces  on 
an  imposing  scale  the  open  arcades,  long  colonnades, 

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The  Days  of  a  Man  £1891 

The  Quad-  and  red-tile  roofing  of  the  old  Spanish  Missions  of 
ranges  California,  enriched  by  the  detail  and  ornament  of 
the  Romanesque,  which  is  also  distinctively  the  style 
of  the  Memorial  Church.  The  Inner  Quadrangle 
consists  of  twelve  one-story  buildings  and  the  Church, 
the  whole  connected  by  a  continuous  open  arcade, 
and  surrounding  a  court  586  feet  long  by  246  feet 
wide  —  that  is,  three  and  a  quarter  acres  in  extent. 
The  buildings  are  of  a  rich,  buff  sandstone  1  which 
hardens  on  exposure  and  is  peculiarly  adapted  for 
chiseling  because  of  its  even  texture  and  lack  of 
breaks."  The  fourteen  buildings  of  the  Outer  Quad- 
rangle, two  and  a  half  stories  in  height,  have  their 
arcades  on  the  outside,  so  that  the  two  sets  are 
placed  back  to  back,  but  with  generous  garden  spaces 
between. 

rbe  Patio  In  the  large  inner  court  are  eight  circular  plots, 
each  about  two  rods  in  diameter,  planted  with 
palm§  of  four  species,  besides  camphor  trees,  loquats, 
Paulownia,  Brachychcete,  Casuarina,  and  other  pic- 
turesque semi-tropical  forms.  Of  very  modest 
growth  when  the  University  opened,  they  now  tower 
almost  above  the  buildings  round  about. 

The  Inner  Quadrangle,  supplemented  by  the 
Chemical  Laboratory  which  stands  apart  and  the 
necessary  shops  sufficiently  removed,  served  for  ten 
years,  though  inadequately,  the  needs  of  the  rapidly 
expanding  institution.  The  Museum,  planned  from 
the  beginning  as  a  separate  unit  of  a  different  type 
of  architecture,  was  placed  some  distance  away. 

To  all  who  have  ever  frequented  the  arcades  and 
courts  of  Stanford  University,  its  founders'  choice 
of  architectural  theme  and  material  seems  inspired. 

1  Quarried  at  New  Almaden,  ten  miles  south  of  San  Jose. 

1:3743 


A  Castle  in  Spain 


The  warm,   sunny  walls  and  red-tiled  roofs,   con-  Color 
trasting  finely  with  our  deep  blue  sky,  blend  into  contrasts 
the  tawny  hues  of  the  California  summer,  while  in 
winter  they  stand  out  effectively  against  the  green 
foothills  and  farther  mass  of  the  Sierra  Morena.    In 
the   courts   and   arcades   resides   a   special   charm, 
peculiarly  compelling   at  sunset  or  when  illumined 
by  the  moon  —  reputed  to  look  bigger  here  than  in 
the  disillusioned  East.     Something  of  all  this  grace 
I  once  tried  to  express  in  a  little  poem  to  my  wife: 

A  CASTLE  IN  SPAIN 

There  stands  a  castle  in  the  heart  of  Spain, 
Builded  of  stone,  as  if  to  stand  for  aye, 
With  tile-roof  red  against  the  azure  sky; 
And  skies  are  bluest  in  the  heart  of  Spain. 

Castle  so  stately  men  build  not  again; 
'Neath  its  broad  arches,  in  its  patio  fair, 
And  through  its  cloisters,  open  everywhere, 
I  wander  as  I  will,  in  sun  or  rain. 
Its  inmost  secret  unto  me  is  known, 
For  mine  the  castle  is.     Nor  mine  alone  — 
'Tis  thine,  O  Love,  to  have  and  hold  alway; 
'Tis  all  the  world's  as  well  as  mine  and  thine; 
For  whoso  enters  its  broad  gate  shall  say: 
"I  dwell  within  this  castle:    it  is  mine." 

The  University's  main  avenue  of  approach,  a  mile  rbt 
long,  passes  through  the  Arboretum,  an  interesting  Arboretum 
and  delightful  feature  of  the  Campus.     This  occu- 
pies a  generous  tract  of  level  ground  between  the 
Quadrangle  and  the  state  highway  following  the  old 
"Camino  Real,"  originally  a  bridle  trail  connecting 
the  Mission  of  Santa  Clara  with  that  of  San  Fran- 
cisco de  Los  Dolores.     In  addition  to  many  fine 
native  live  oaks,  the  Arboretum  contains  a  choice 

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The  Days  of  a  Man  £1891 

collection  of  trees,  mostly  evergreen,  from  all  parts 
of  the  world.  Intermingled  are  many  specimens  of 
the  Tasmanian  Blue  Gum  —  Eucalyptus  globosus 

—  a  tree  of  very  rapid  growth  which  quickly  formed 
a  forest  while  the  conifers  (cedars,  cypresses,  deodars, 
firs,    spruces,    redwoods,    and    sequoias)    were    still 
small.      Through    this    woodland    several    pleasant 
winding  ways  radiate  from  the  Stanford  mausoleum, 
a  dignified  marble  structure  in  classic  style.     Near 
by  is  a  curious  cactus  garden  exhibiting  interesting 
species  from  the  Yuma  deserts. 

Along  each  side  of  the  broad  avenue,  Mr.  Stan- 
for(j  (at  mv  SUggestion)  planted  in  1893  a  row  of 
palms,  alternating  the  fan  palm  —  Neowashingtonia 
filifera  —  a  native  of  San  Diego  County,  with  the 
Canary  Island  date  —  Phoenix  canariensis.  Unfortu- 
nately, for  the  first  eight  or  ten  years  the  general 
effect  was  greatly  marred  by  the  depredations  of 
the  pocket  gopher  —  Geomys  —  an  underground 
rodent  which  becomes  a  veritable  pest  in  California 
gardens  as  well  as  in  alfalfa  fields.  At  intervals, 
therefore,  a  dozen  or  so  plants  had  to  be  replaced  in 
one  part  of  the  avenue,  thus  breaking  the  evenness 
of  the  series.  Nearer  the  University,  fan  palms  and 
dates  give  place  to  the  Japanese  form  —  Trachy  carpus 

—  and  the  New  Zealand  dracaena  —  Tcetsia  indivisa 

—  known  in  its  native  land  as  "cabbage  tree." 


We  reached  our  new  home  toward  the  end  of 
June,  1891.  Leaving  the  train  at  Menlo  Park,  I 
carried  in  my  arms  our  little  boy,  being  at  the  same 
time  further  burdened  with  hand  baggage.  This 

C3763 


1891]  Escondite  Cottage 

modest  arrival  commended  me  highly  to  "Steve" 
Gage,  one  of  Senator  Stanford's  cronies,  who  was 
waiting  with  him  at  the  station,  curious  to  see  what 
manner  of  man  I  might  be.  When  asked  later  for 
his  first  impression  of  the  new  functionary,  Gage 
replied:  "I  guess  he'll  stand  hitched." 

On  the  Campus  there  was  then  but  one  available  A 
house,   a  secluded  furnished   cottage  to  which  we  CaUf°rnia 

i  r    r-  7-  «i_«j»  i  »       T^I  • 

gave  the  name  or  Lscondite,1  hiding  place.  1ms 
is  a  picturesque  little  structure  with  rooms  arranged 
one  after  another  in  an  L-shaped  building  of  one 
story.  During  our  occupancy,  most  of  the  walls 
were  hung  with  French  chintz;  the  whole  house, 
indeed,  was  modeled  somewhat  closely  after  the 
Petit  Trianon  of  Versailles.  About  it  extended  a 
pretty  garden  with  fine  shade  trees  and  a  good 
supply  of  water,  as  well  as  a  number  of  fig  trees  and 
a  vineyard.  The  vineyard  yielded  mainly  a  small 
light-green,  seedless  grape  called  "Sweetwater." 
When  Knight,  not  quite  three  years  old,  had  tasted 
a  few  of  the  delicious  little  globules,  he  said  to  his 
mother:  "I  want  some  more  of  those  little  pills!" 
From  Mrs.  Stanford  we  heard  partial  details  of 
Escondite's  romantic  history.  It  appeared  that 
some  years  earlier,  one  Peter  Coutts,  vaguely  known  Peter 
to  the  countryside  as  "the  Frenchman,"  had  bought  Coutts 
the  Matadero  Ranch  lying  to  the  south  of  the 
original  Palo  Alto  estate.  Possessed  apparently  of 
considerable  wealth,  he  built  the  Trianon  cottage  as 
a  temporary  dwelling  only,  pending  the  erection  of 
a  mansion  on  one  of  the  adjacent  hills.  Meanwhile 
a  spacious  park  was  being  developed  along  French 
lines,  with  a  poplar  avenue,  a  small  pine  forest,  and 

1  Pronounced  Escondee' tay . 

C3773 


The  Days  of  a  Man  £1891 

Adorning  an  artificial  lake  with  a  tiny  island  bearing  a  ruined 
nature  castle,  to  enhance  (as  the  owner  thought)  the  charm- 
ing natural  features  of  the  property.  Opposite  the 
cottage  rose  a  plain  but  substantial  brick  building, 
the  lower  floor  of  which  served  as  office,  while  above 
was  housed  a  considerable  library  of  Elzevirs.  In 
the  immediate  neighborhood  several  small  barns 
provided  stalls  for  a  hundred  blooded  cows,  groomed 
regularly  each  day.  When  Stanford  acquired  the 
property,  this  particular  corner  was  used  for  the 
Thoroughbreds  and  became  known  as  the  Running 
Ranch — in  contradistinction  to  the  famous  Trot- 
ting Ranch,  a  mile  away. 

In  vain  search  for  enough  water  to  supply  the 
elaborate  arrangements  he  contemplated,  Coutts 
tunneled  many  of  the  hills,  and  built  on  Matadero 
Creek  a  brick  water-tower  of  medieval  type  and  still 
of  romantic  interest  to  succeeding  generations  of 
Stanford  students.  Unfortunately,  however,  there 
was  something  amiss  about  it  all,  some  important 
matters  the  French  Government  wished  to  have 
explained.  Yet  the  preliminary  inquiry  conducted 
by  a  French  agent  seems  to  have  turned  out  satis- 
Dis-  factorily  to  both  sides.  But  with  the  advent  of 
appear-  another  consul  in  San  Francisco,  Coutts  suddenly 

anceoftbe     r  i    •  i        i  •      /•        «i       T-*  • 

"French-  found  it  necessary  to  take  his  family  Last  on  im- 
portant  business,  leaving  the  place  still  filled  with 
guests  and  the  children's  playthings  scattered  about 
on  the  floor.  Investigation  then  revealed  that  the 
estate  had  been  bought  in  the  name  of  Eugenie 
Chogensen,  the  "governess."  Rumor  further  said 
that  Coutts  had  fled  from  France  with  Alsatian  funds 
entrusted  to  his  bank  during  the  Franco-Prussian 
War  in  order  that  they  might  escape  sequestration. 

H3783 


A  Visitor  from  Los  Gatos 


Be  that  as  it  may,  the  Matadero  tract  was  later 
bought  for  Stanford  by  his  agent  in  London  from 
Mademoiselle  Eugenie,  and  as  already  implied,  be- 
came part  of  the  university  Campus. 

One  of  our  early  callers  at  Escondite  was  a  mining 
man  from  Nevada,  a  mineralogist  of  some  ability, 
who  walked  the  twenty  miles  from  Los  Gatos  where 
he  had  been  taking  the  "gold  cure"  to  try  to  get 
rid  of  the  snakes,  "jack  rabbits  with  ribbons  on  Alcoholic 
their  ears,"  and  other  peculiar  fauna  which  were  fauna 
beginning  to  haunt  him.  The  so-called  cure  was 
apparently  some  salt  of  arsenic  which  exerts  a 
powerful  influence  on  the  nervous  system  but  is 
reputed  too  dangerous  for  ordinary  use  by  physicians. 
Not  finding  his  condition  improved,  my  acquaintance 
had  come  over  on  a  very  hot  day,  hoping  to  borrow 
money  enough  to  reach  his  home  in  Nevada,  where  . 
he  said  he  should  kill  himself.  I  gave  both  money 
and  sympathetic  advice,  but  never  heard  from  him 
afterward.  While  he  sat  there,  forlorn,  dusty,  and 
soggy,  Knight  entered  and,  taking  him  for  a  real 
man  and  a  friend,  walked  up  and  offered  to  shake 
hands.  It  was  a  long  time  since  he  had  been  thus 
humanly  treated,  and  he  nearly  broke  down.  But 
suddenly  he  pulled  himself  together,  a  great  change 
came  over  his  appearance  for  a  moment,  and  I  heard 
him  repeating  softly  the  words  from  Dickens'  little 
poem,  "The  Children": 

I  know  now  how  Jesus  could  liken 
The  Kingdom  of  God  to  a  child. 

For  two  years  we  lived  picturesquely  (if  not  with 
entire   comfort)   at   Escondite,   and  in  this  quaint 

C3793 


The  Days  of  a  Man  £1891 

cottage,  a  bit  of  France  translated  to  California, 
was  born  on  November  10,  1891,  our  beloved  daugh- 
ter Barbara,  the  sweetest,  wisest,  comeliest,  and 
most  lovable  of  children. 

Ordered         The  evening  after  our  arrival,  going  over  to  see 
out  jlow  tne  university  buildings  had  progressed,  Mrs. 

Jordan  and  I  were  at  first  .naturally  ordered  out  by 
the  watchman  as  intruders.  Later  I  came  to  feel 
more  at  home  in  the  Quadrangle  than  anywhere 
else  in  the  world,  although  the  first  impression  of 
us  all  was  of  being  on  an  extended  picnic  in  the 
beautiful  Santa  Clara  Valley. 

The  next  day  I  chose  for  the  executive  offices  a 
building  on  the  north  side  of  the  main  entrance, 
and  there  Elliott,  Richardson,  and  I  used  to  spend 
the  day,  eating  our  luncheons  in  the  shadow  of 
the  beautiful  arcade.  There  was  plenty  to  do  in 
preparation  for  the  opening;  and  regularly  one  of 
us  drove  or  walked  to  Menlo  Park,  two  miles  away, 
Pioneering  to  bring  back  the  growing  bag  of  official  mail.  For 
there  was  practically  nothing  at  what  is  now  the 
city  of  Palo  Alto,  only  a  flag  stop  for  the  conven- 
ience of  workmen  employed  at  the  University  it- 
self or  about  the  Stock  Farm.  Later,  as  a  town 
began  to  develop  northeast  of  the  railway,  an  old 
freight  car  served  temporarily  for  station,  to  be 
ultimately  replaced  by  a  fairly  satisfactory  struc- 
ture disturbed  from  time  to  time  by  growing 
pains. 

When  we  came,  a  great  wheatfield  stretched  away 
to  the  north,  with  only  a  little  farmhouse  and  an 
old  barn  in  sight.  Soon,  however,  streets  were  laid 
out  and  lots  plotted  and  sold ;  people  began  to  build, 
a  merchant  and  a  grocer  set  up  shop,  a  bank  was 

C  380] 


r  ••• 


1891]         "The  Growth  of  Palo  Alto 

opened,  schools  were  established,  and,  behold,  we 
had  a  town.  A  particularly  good  one,  also,  because 
it  at  once  drew  to  itself  a  selected  population  at- 
tracted by  the  intellectual  advantages  of  the  Uni- 
versity and  the  assurance  of  a  clean  environment 
for  children.  As  to  the  last,  every  lot  was  bought  A 
with  the  accepted  proviso  that  no  alcoholic  drinks  Prohibition 

11  ill  •  T>1  1     •  1  iOWn 

should  ever  be  sold  on  it.  Ihat  this  restriction  has 
not  been  infringed  without  reversion  to  the  original 
owner,  Timothy  Hopkins,  as  arranged  for  in  the 
deeds,  I  cannot  assert.  Nevertheless,  it  stands  in 
law,  having  been  established  by  a  test  case,  and  as  a 
result  the  community  is  to  a  large  extent  a  picked 
one,  with  relatively  little  of  evil  influence  to  combat. 

The  settlement  was  first  called  "  Palo  Alto  Park," 
but  it  later  took  possession  of  the  shorter  form 
which  really  belonged  only  to  Stanford  University 
property,  all  of  which  lies  on  the  other  side  of  the 
railway.  In  1920,  Palo  Alto  had  reached  a  popula- 
tion of  6000,  and  is  now  a  favorite  place  of  residence 
for  men  who  commute  daily  to  their  business  in  San 
Francisco  but  prefer  to  live  in  the  country  and  in  a 
college  town  with  progressive  schools,  both  public 
and  private. 

Palo  Alto  is  also  noted  for  the  success  of  its  munici- 
pally owned  public  utilities.    In  the  introduction  and 
management  of  these,  two  members  of  the  Stanford 
faculty,  Charles  B.  Wing  and  Charles  D.  Marx,  the  City 
former  especially,  have  continuously  given  invalu-  fatbers 
able  expert  advice  and  much  time,  without  thought 
of  pay.    Wing  and  Robert  E.  Swain  have  also  served 
the  town  in  the  capacity  of  mayor,  the  latter  for 
two    terms.      Others    have    meanwhile    contributed 
their  due  share  in  various  ways  to  the  common  good 

C  381  3 


The  Days  of  a  Man 


and  often  at  a  real  sacrifice,  which  they  would,  how- 
ever, modestly  disclaim!1 

Saving  the  The  special  beauty  of  Palo  Alto  (aside  from 
live  oaks  climate  and  general  surroundings)  lies  in  its  abun- 
dant growth  of  fine  live  oaks,  many  of  which  are  still 
left  standing  in  the  less-frequented  streets  where 
they  are  not  a  menace  to  traffic.  Apropos  of  this  I 
recall  with  satisfaction  an  incident  wherein  I  figured 
somewhat  autocratically.  Learning  that  a  number 
of  splendid  trees  near  the  station  were  likely  to  be 
cut  down  by  road  makers,  quite  unnecessarily  as 
it  seemed  to  me,  I  sent  word  that  if  any  more  were 
sacrificed  I  should  close  the  main  university  gate 
and  transact  our  business  with  Menlo  Park.  I  had 
no  special  authority  to  do  this,  but  the  threat  was 
sufficient.  As  a  consequence  "the  Circle"  retains 
much  of  its  original  beauty. 

"Uncle          A  unique  figure  in  Stanford  affairs  appeared  with 
John"       tjie  rise  of  palo  Ajto     jhjg  was  tjie  famous  "Uncle 

John/'  whose  "  surrey  "  plied  between  the  station 
and  the  University.  Devoting  himself  with  zest  to 
the  enlightenment  of  visitors,  he  told  amazing  yarns 
which  spread  his  fame  far  and  wide.  The  four 
marble  statues  of  Greek  celebrities  2  on  the  Museum 
roof  he  described  as  great  librarians,  and  provided 
for  each  an  elaborate  if  not  veracious  history.  The 
different  university  buildings  he  described  as  centers 
of  musical  instruction,  a  "diaploma"  from  this  one 

1  A.  W.  Smith,  J.  C.  L.  Fish   C.  H.  Gilbert,  L.  M.  Hoskins,  W.  W.  Tho- 
burn,  F.  Angell,  A.  G.  Warner,  F.  Sanford,  A.  T.  Murray,  G.  H.  Marx,  J.  P. 
Mitchell,  A.  M.  Cathcart,  and  others.    I  may  here  mention  also  A.  B.  Clark's 
excellent  service  as  mayor  of  the  neighboring  town  of  Mayfield  while  he  was 
a  resident  there.     For  further  particulars  concerning  the  academic  relations 
of  most  of  these  "City  Fathers,"  see  Chapter  xvn,  page  398,  and  Chapter 
xvni,  page  439. 

2  Thrown  down  in  the  earthquake  of  1906. 

n  382  3 


1891]       The  University  Community 

or  from  that  signifying  proficiency  in  this  or  that 
particular  instrument.  Another  yarn  concerned  the 
"ground  squirrel"  or  spermophile  —  Otospermophilus 
—  with  which  our  region  was  then  infested  and  the 
many  holes  of  which  were  visible  along  the  roads 
and  by  the  railway.  According  to  Uncle  John,  the 
Southern  Pacific  Company  had  ordered  the  holes 
burrowed  at  its  own  expense  for  the  accommodation 
of  the  animals.  Few  ever  knew  his  real  name, 
which  was  Asa  Andrews,  or  that  he  had  once  been  a 
prosperous  merchant  in  Chautauqua,  New  York. 


That  a  flourishing  little  city  would  soon  spring 
up  just  without  our  gates  we  hardly  dreamed  when 
first  set  down  on  a  great  country  estate  adorned  by 
a  group  of  beautiful  (though  empty)  collegiate  build- 
ings which  seemed  somehow  marvelously  to  fit  their 
environment. 

Meanwhile  Escondite  and  Cedro  Cottage,  another 
picturesque  retreat  which  was  soon  rented  by  Dr. 
Jenkins,  were  the  only  occupied  residences  on  the 
Campus  proper.  Streets  had  been  graded,  how- 
ever, and  on  one  of  them  several  simple  frame 
houses  for  professors  were  being  completed  as  rapidly 
as  possible.  Requested  by  Mr.  Stanford  to  give  Naming 
names  to  the  streets  already  finished,  I  decided, 
with  his  approval,  to  commemorate  thus  modestly 
several  fine  figures  in  the  early  history  of  California. 
Accordingly  the  line  of  new  dwellings  became  Al- 
varado  Row  in  honor  of  Juan  B.  Alvarado,  an  early 
governor.  Next  comes  Salvatierra  Street,  recalling 
the  Jesuit  father  in  Mexico  who  first  urged  the 

C383  3 


The  Days  of  a  Man  £1891 

founding  of  missions  in  Alta  California.  The  road 
on  which  the  Quadrangle  fronts  we  called  Serra 
Avenue  in  memory  of  the  Franciscan  padre,  Juni- 
pero  Serra,  who  built  the  first  missions,  performing 
marvels  of  energy  and  patience  in  dealing  with  the 
Indians,  for  whose  salvation,  temporal  and  spiritual, 
the  work  was  planned.  Lasuen  Street  is  named  for 
Firmin  Lasuen,  the  self-contained  successor  of  the 
impulsive  and  visionary  Serra. 

Other  streets  bear  the  names  of  Cabrillo,  first  ex- 
plorer; of  Portola,  first  governor;  of  Arguello,  a  later 
one;  of  Padre  Crespi,  historian  of  Portola's  expedi- 
tion;- of  Costanzo,  its  civil  engineer;  and  of  Flores 
and  Rivera,  two  of  its  officers/  For  it  will  be  re- 
Don  membered  that  the  gallant  Caspar  de  Portola  had 
come  UP  tne  coast  from  Monterey,  seeking  the  lost 
"  Bay  of  St.  Francis  "  recorded  long  before  by  Viz- 
caino, but  which  is  in  reality  Drake's  Bay,  lying  to 
the  north  of  the  fog-hidden  Golden  Gate.  Crossing 
the  hills  behind  Point  San  Pedro,  Portola  and  his 
men  looked  down  on  what  they  termed  "a  Medi- 
terranean Sea/'  and  named  it  for  the  founder  of 
their  order,  Francisco  de  Assisi.  Descending  then 
toward  this  great  sheet  of  water,  they  halted  on  the 
little  "Arroyo  de  San  Francisquito,"  at  the  ford  by 
the  present  Middlefield  bridge,  not  far  from  the 
"tall  tree."  Here  the  characteristic  tangle  of  brush, 
added  to  the  unfriendliness  of  the  Indians,  caused 
them  to  turn  back  and  make  their  way  along  the 
shore  to  Monterey  again. 

During  the  summer,  the  Inner  Quadrangle  and 
Encina  1  Hall,  a  fine  big  dormitory  for  men,  were 

1  The  Spanish  name  of  the  live  oak  —  Quercus  agrifolia. 

£384:1 


18913  Roble  Hall 


rushed  to  completion.  But  for  the  young  women  a  Provision 
very  special  effort  was  necessary,  as  the  original  idea  for  women 
had  been  not  to  admit  them  until  later,  when  another 
huge  dormitory,  already  begun,  could  be  made  ready 
for  their  reception.  But  it  had  seemed  to  me  that 
they  should  be  present  from  the  beginning,  so  that 
their  admittance  might  not  appear  in  any  sense  an 
afterthought,  or  their  relation  that  of  an  "Annex." 
Mrs.  Stanford  at  once  agreed  and  immediately  gave 
orders  for  the  erection  of  Roble 1  Hall,  which, 
though  not  begun  until  early  July,  must  be  finished 
and  furnished  for  the  opening  on  October  I.  Haste 
being  the  prime  essential,  recourse  was  had  to  the 
"Ransome  Process,"  recently  patented  —  namely, 
the  use  of  reinforced  concrete.  Roble  was  thus  the 
second  building  for  which  that  method  was  ever 
employed,  the  Museum,  already  practically  com- 
pleted in  its  original  form,  being  the  first.  In  both 
cases  the  material  used  was  made  up  of  crushed 
sandstone  chippings  from  the  Quadrangle  and  Encina. 

The  Museum,  as  well  as  the  Memorial  Church  ne 
finished  in  1902,  came  very  near  to  Mrs.  Stanford's  Museum 
heart.     Architecturally  it  reproduced  the  Museum 
at  Athens,  which  young  Leland  had  fixed  upon  as 
model  for  the  one  he  meant  to  build.2    At  the  rear, 
two  special  rooms  were  set  apart  to  hold  his  collec- 
tion.   These  duplicate  in  size  and  form  those  allotted 
to  him  on  the  upper  floor  of  the  great  San  Francisco 
residence,  where  an  elaborate  series  of  photographs 


1  Roble  (Latin  robur)  is  the  Spanish  name  for  the  White  Oak  —  Quercus 
lobata.     In  1918  it  was  transferred  to  a  large  and  beautiful  new  dormitory  for 
women,  the  original  Roble  being  rechristened  Sequoia  Hall. 

2  In  1900  Mrs.  Stanford  added  to  this  structure  a  series  of  two-story  wings 
which  passed  around  from  either  side,  and  meeting  behind,  enclosed  a  quad- 
rangular court. 


The  Days  of  a  Man  £1891 

was  taken  so  that  everything  might  retain  the  same 

relative  place  in  its  new  location. 

installing       The  collections  Mrs.   Stanford  herself  had  long 
the  general  been    making    were    now    rapidly    installed.      The 

collections        .  „    to.  ,  J      .    .       ,          .       . 

picture  galleries  contained  many  original  paintings, 
some  of  which,  especially  those  by  Russian  artists, 
were  of  decided  merit.  There  were  also  a  number  of 
copies  of  masterpieces  by  Raphael,  Murillo,  Del 
Sarto,  and  others.  Several  of  these  latter,  together 
with  a  noble  work  by  Benjamin  West,  were,  how- 
ever, soon  transferred  to  the  walls  of  the  old  Chapel, 
in  which  for  ten  years  all  religious  services  were 
held.  The  main  part  of  the  lower  floor  housed  a 
mixed  assemblage  of  objects  of  varied  merit.  One 
room  contained  half  of  the  well-known  Cesnola  Col- 
lection excavated  in  Cyprus.  Others  displayed 
Chinese,  Japanese,  Korean,  Egyptian,  Roman,  and 
Indian  objects  and  antiquities. 

Family          In  the  rooms  immediately  above  Leland's,  Mrs. 

treasures  Stanford  gradually  placed  a  multitude  of  intimate 
and  interesting  things  of  all  sorts  —  family  photo- 
graphs and  heirlooms,  gifts  from  relatives  and 
friends  (some  of  no  intrinsic  value,  perhaps,  but 
dear  to  her  as  expressions  of  affection),  as  well  as  a 
number  of  her  own  elegant  dresses  representing 
earlier  modes  of  fashion,  besides  a  superb  collection 
of  lace  and  one  of  splendid  shawls,  historical  relics, 
and  I  know  not  what  else. 

Critical  visitors  of  former  days  sometimes  laid 
scornful  stress  on  the  extremely  personal  nature  of 
a  part  of  the  family  collection  and  the  heterogeneous 
character  of  the  one  just  below.  But  for  most  of 
us  who  came  close  to  the  donor  and  knew  her  noble 
devotion,  the  emotions  aroused  were  very  different. 

C  3863 


INNER  COURT  AND  MEMORIAL  CHURCH,   1909 


LOOKING  THROUGH  TRIPLE  ARCH,  INNER  COURT, 
INTO  MEMORIAL  COURT 


1891]    Iceland  Stanford  Junior  Museum 

Moreover,  she  had  the  long  future  in  mind.  Many 
things  that  might  possibly  seem  out  of  place  in  her 
own  lifetime  would  no  doubt  later  acquire  a  museum 
value  and  would  certainly  be  of  special  interest  to 
the  university  community. 

In  the  collection  made  by  the  boy  were  many  fine  The  boy 
objects  well  chosen  and  giving  proof  of  dawning  Leland 
artistic  judgment.  As  a  whole  it  serves  to  fix  for- 
ever the  warm  human  quality  underlying  the  dedi- 
cation of  the  Stanford  millions  to  the  training  of 
American  youth.  For  young  Leland  was  a  real 
boy,  with  healthy  interests  and  undoubted  promise. 
The  significance  of  his  life  to  the  uncounted  numbers 
who  shall  pass  through  the  institution  that  bears 
his  name  it  would  be  impossible  to  compute.  That 
fact  alone  should  hallow  the  toys  with  which  he 
played,  the  books  he  read,  the  nucleus  of  a  collection 
he  left.  Moreover,  while  most  lads  of  his  age  and 
social  position  were  spending  their  pocket  money 
on  trivial  even  if  innocent  amusements,  his  chief 
joy  was  to  pick  up  treasures  for  his  projected 
museum. 


During  the  weeks  of  preparation  Mrs.  Jordan  and  Our  new 
I,  alone  or  with  friends,  explored  the  mountains  and  enmron~ 
shores  within  easy  distance  of  Palo  Alto.    Little  by 
little,   then   and   afterward,   the   great   and  varied 
charms  of  the  four  counties  of  our  new  environment 
—  Santa  Clara,  Santa  Cruz,  San  Mateo,  and  Mon- 
terey —  unrolled  before  us.    And  even  at  that  early 
period  we  felt  that  we  should  never  want  to  live 
anywhere  else.     In  such  a  frame  of  mind  I  wrote 
for  my  wife  the  following  verses: 

C  387  3 


ment 


The  Days  of  a  Man  £1891 


SANTA  CLARA  VIRGEN  Y  MARTIR 

Now  that  the  throng  has  left  me, 
I  softly  close  my  eyes, 

And  one  by  one  before  me 
The  fairest  visions  rise,  — 

The  best  that  Life  can  give  me 
Of  all  Life  signifies. 

I  see  a  sunlit  valley 

Between  two  mountain  chains, 
Where  roses  bloom  and  lilies 

Along  the  grassy  lanes 
Aflame  with  golden  poppies 

And  wet  with  fragrant  rains. 

I  see  from  purple  mountains 
The  lengthening  shadows  creep, 

Touching  the  lanes  of  poppies, 
Closing  their  eyes  in  sleep; 

And  Earth's  uneasy  clamor 
Is  hushed  in  silence  deep. 

Again,  through  sprays  of  jasmine, 
A  woman's  face  I  see; 

I  care  not  what  her  beauty 
Or  her  attractions  be  — 

There  may  be  many  fairer 
But  none  so  fair  to  me. 

Again,  a  gentle  lady 

Who  lived  in  other  days, 

A  virgin  and  a  martyr  — 
So  the  old  legend  says  — 

Who  in  her  name  enfoldeth 
Delicious  destinies. 

O  blessed  Santa  Clara! 
Her  spell  be  over  thee, 

c  388  a 


1891]  Santa  Clara  Valley 

To  keep  thee  bright  and  joyous 

As  all  her  roses  be; 
May  her  sweet  influence  cover 

The  hours  'twixt  thee  and  me. 

The  Santa  Clara  Valley,  averaging  about  six 
miles  in  width,  extends  southward  fifty  miles  and 
more  from  near  the  head  of  San  Francisco  Bay. 
Bounding  it  on  the  southwest  rises  an  irregular  sierra 
series  of  Coast  Range  ridges,  known  collectively  as 
the  Sierra  de  la  Santa  Cruz,  — 

A  misty  camp  of  mountains  pitched  tumultuously. 

Immediately  behind  the  university  estate,  and 
forming  its  higher  background,  is  the  wooded  Sierra 
Morena,  1300  feet  high,  its  cloak  of  redwood,  oak, 
and  madrono  diversified  by  thickets  of  chemisal.1 
Farther  south  this  merges  into  the  domelike  height 
of  Monte  Bello,  2400  feet,  the  east  face  of  which  is 
locally  known  as  Black  Mountain.  Still  farther  to 
the  southward,  beyond  Los  Gatos  Creek,  appear  a 
number  of  other  wooded  knobs,  Loma  Prieta,  the 
dominating  one,  "looming"  in  gracious  beauty  3800 
feet  high  above  the  valley. 

On  the  east,  opposing  the  green  ridges  of  the  Holy  sierra 
Cross,  stretches  the  innermost  or  landward  bulwark  *** 
of  the  Coast  Range  —  the  long,  relatively  barren,  Diablo 
and    treeless    Sierra    del    Monte    Diablo.      Mount 

1  Properly  "the  place  of  chemiso"  —  Adenostoma  fasciculatum  —  a  brushy, 
rosaceous  plant  which  covers  large  tracts  of  barren  hillsides  of  moderate  height. 
Chaparral,  a  parallel  and  more  common  term  originally  given  to  the  dwarf 
live  oak  of  Spain,  means  "the  place  of  chaparra"  or  brush  in  general.  Both 
chemisal  and  chaparral  are  almost  impenetrable  except  to  the  bobcat,  cotton- 
tail, and  road  runner.  The  latter  —  Geococcyx  —  is  a  species  of  cuckoo  with 
a  very  long,  thin  body,  long  tail,  and  longer  legs,  which  seldom  flies  but  runs 
over  the  ground  with  amazing  speed,  and  is,  all  told,  the  most  fantastically 
delightful  feature  of  California  ornithology. 

1:389  3 


The  Days  of  a  Man  ^1891 

Hamilton,  its  culminating  point,  4440  feet  above 
the  city  of  San  Jose,  bears  the  famous  observatory 
founded  by  James  Lick,  of  which  more  presently. 
Close  beside  it,  and  nearly  as  high,  is  the  twin 
peak,  Santa  Ysabel,  still  dark  with  chaparral  of 
evergreen  scrub  oak.  What  an  asset  to  California 
are  the  Spanish  names  scattered  by  Father  Crespi 
around  each  of  Portola's  camping  grounds! 
Monte  Etched  against  the  sky,  straight  north  from 

Diablo  Stanford  University  and  visible  from  every  angle, 
rises  Monte  Diablo  itself,  a  rocky  cone  4000  feet 
high,  and  our  best  point  of  orientation,  because  other- 
wise one  never  knows  which  way  is  north  from  Palo 
Alto.  In  this  valley,  neither  ridges,  streets,  nor  build- 
ings are  set  on  the  square  ;  even  the  compass  betrays, 
for  it  responds  to  the  magnetic  north,  here  at  its 
farthest  —  seventeen  degrees  —  from  the  North  Star. 
"The  Devil's  Ridge"  with  its  tawny  summer 
cloak  of  ripened  wild  oats,  overwashed  at  sunset  by 
translucent  amethystine  hues,  faces  in  impious  con- 
trast the  dark,  purpling  slopes  of  the  Holy  Cross. 


July  the  local  wild  flowers  are  practically 
past,  but  our  brief  visit  the  preceding  March  had 
revealed  California's  amazing  resources  in  bloom. 
rbe  Most  showy  of  all,  and  flaring  in  every  field  where 
golden  not  routed  by  the  plow,  crowds  the  golden  poppy 
—  Eschscholtzia  calif  ornica  —  the  Cop  a  d'oro  of  the 
Fathers,  with  great  orange  cups  which  drink  in  the 
sunlight  but  close  with  the  shadow.  Behind  its 
somewhat  uncouth  scientific  name  lies  a  romantic 
incident.  In  1817,  while  on  the  way  to  explore  the 
North  Pacific,  Kotzebue's  vessel,  the  Russian 
Rurik,  cast  anchor  off  San  Francisco.  With  the  expe- 

C  390  3 


The  Valley  of  Fragrance 


dition  were  two  naturalists,  Adalbert  von  Chamisso, 
the  poet-botanist,  an  exile  from  the  French  Revo- 
lution, and  the  surgeon-zoologist,  Johann  Esch- 
scholtz,  professor  at  Dorpat.  Returning  from  a 
shore  expedition  with  a  sheaf  of  brilliant  flowers, 
the  poet  said  to  the  surgeon:  "I  have  found  a 
beautiful  new  plant  and  I  shall  name  it  for  you." 

But  it  was  not  until  the  following  spring  —  and  Miles 
increasingly  with  succeeding  seasons  —  that  an  es-  ™dm 

•    i      i  c     i        n  rf~w  XT    11  i»      i  i    of  bloom 

pecial  glory  of  the  banta  Clara  Valley  was  disclosed 
to  us.  Usually  at  about  the  end  of  March  the  burst 
buds  of  thousands  upon  thousands  of  fruit  trees 
seem  from  the  hills  above  to  blend  into  a  gigantic 
garden  of  fragrant  bloom.  On  the  valley  floor  and 
looking  through  the  long  vistas  which  often  extend 
farther  than  the  eye  can  reach,  one  gets  a  different 
impression.  It  is  then  as  if  he  found  himself  in  an 
ethereal  forest  where  blossoms  take  the  place  of 
leaves.  Everywhere  the  sight  is  indescribably 
beautiful. 

The  hamlet  of  Saratoga,  boasting  a  fine  carbon- 
ated spring,  and  the  little  city  of  Los  Gatos  sit 
in  beauty  on  a  rich  upland  at  the  foot  of  Black 
Mountain,  where  the  fruit  is  at  its  best  and  the 
outlook,  both  up  and  down,  of  the  fairest.  In  this 
favored  region  with  a  Riviera  climate  are  many 
charming  homes,  none  more  delightful  than  the 
"Rancho  Bella  Vista"  of  our  friends  the  Blaneys.1 
Their  beautiful  Italian  villa,  the  combined  triumph 
of  the  owners  and  two  California  artists,  Willis  Polk 
and  Bruce  Porter,  fits  perfectly  into  its  encircling 
landscape  of  vineyard,  orchard,  and  foothills. 

At   Saratoga  the   people   celebrate   each  year  a 

1  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Charles  Duchene  Blaney. 

C  39i  3 


The  Days  of  a  Man  1:1891 

"Blossom  Day  Festival"  on  the  Saturday  which 
falls  nearest  the  prime  of  display,  and  on  Sunday 
special  services  are  held  in  the  local  churches. 
The  Lick  Shortly  after  our  arrival  we  visited  Lick  Observa- 
obsena-  toly  as  {fog  guests  of  its  versatile  head,  Edward  S. 
Holden.  Through  the  great  telescope,  which  reveals 
any  object  on  the  moon  larger  than  a  barn,  we 
viewed  the  glittering  craters,  and  had  a  superb 
glimpse  of  Saturn  and  its  rings.  Dr.  Holden  enter- 
tained us  royally,  but  seemed  a  bit  cynical  about 
the  apparent  cordiality  of  my  reception  in  Cali- 
fornia. Referring  to  the  many  requests  for  lectures 
I  was  then  receiving,  he  warned  me  that  early 
popularity  meant  nothing.  With  the  second  year 
came  reaction,  and  any  man  whose  vogue  endured 
was  distinctly  fortunate.  Later,  with  characteristic 
humor,  he  spoke  of  my  efforts  in  "diffusing  over 
California  the  rich  culture  of  the  Middle  West." 
But  again,  and  more  graciously,  he  remarked  to 
Mrs.  Comstock:  "Oh,  the  youth  of  Jordan's  faculty 
must  make  the  gods  pale  with  envy!" 

As  a  memorial,  Lick  had  first  contemplated  a 
monstrous  statue  of  himself  in  Golden  Gate  Park. 
But  George  Davidson,  then  director  of  the  United 
States  Coast  Survey,  urged  that  a  monument  to 
science  would  ensure  undying  fame,  while  the  statue 
would  be  promptly  knocked  to  pieces  in  the  event 
of  war.  The  outcome  of  that  good  advice  was  the 
admirably  equipped  Lick  Observatory,  completed  in 
1884  and  turned  over  to  the  University  of  Cali- 
fornia in  1888,  and  the  endowment  of  the  struggling 
California  Academy  of  Sciences. 

Another  memorable  trip  was  our  first  visit  to  the 
"Felton  Big  Trees"  —  a  grove  of  Sequoia  semper- 

C  392  3 


Sequoia  Sempervirens 


virens  (not  the  Sequoia  washingtonia  1  or  gigantea  The  Coast 
of  the  Sierra,  to  which  the  adjective  "big"  is  usually  redwood 
applied)  —  in  the  Santa  Cruz  Mountains.  This  is 
a  cluster  of  some  dozens  of  stately  redwoods  from 
five  to  twelve  feet  in  diameter  and  200  or  more  feet 
high.  Close  set,  with  their  luxuriant  foliage  lifted 
far  above,  they  inevitably  suggest  the  pillars  of  a 
great  cathedral.  Second  in  size  only  to  the  giant 
of  the  Sierra,  this  species  is  the  pride  and  glory  of 
the  Coast  Ranges  from  San  Luis  Obispo  to  the 
Oregon  Line,  though  by  an  interesting  feature  of 
distribution  one  never  finds  it  beyond  the  reach  of 
fog  from  the  sea.  Its  chief  peculiarity,  however,  is 
a  sort  of  longevity  not  shared  by  any  other  conifer. 
Fire  rarely  kills  it,  and  from  a  huge,  naked  stump 
springs  up  a  more  or  less  complete  circle  of  daughter 
trees  which  rapidly  attain  considerable  size. 

A  third  and  very  delightful  excursion  took  us  to  A  noble 
the  bold  summit  of  Monte  Diablo,  from  which  we  outlook 
looked  over  the  golden  harvest  of  the  San  Joaquin 
to  the  white-cloaked  Sierra  a  hundred  miles  away,  and, 
toward  the  west,  across  the  blue  Bay  of  San  Fran- 
cisco and  the  green  slopes  of  Tamalpais  to  the  great 
ocean  beyond.  The  top  was  then  reached  only  by  trail. 
Our  easy  ascent  was  due  to  the  hospitable  courtesy 
of  Mr.  and  Mrs.  John  F.  Boyd,  who  provided  two 
excellent  horses  and  entertained  us  over  night  in  their 
charming  rancho  home  at  the  foot  of  the  mountain. 

1  The  specific  name  washingtonia  is  not  so  old  as  the  more  appropriate 
gigantea,  but  the  latter  name  had  been  previously  given  to  a  different  Sequoia, 
which  turned  out  to  be  the  common  redwood.  Fortunately,  however,  the 
generic  term  Sequoia,  name  of  the  famous  Cherokee  Chief  who  invented  an 
alphabet,  holds  over  Wellingtonia  and  Washingtonia,  later  bestowed  through 
misapplied  patriotism,  the  one  by  an  English,  the  other  by  an  American 
botanist. 

C  393  3 


CHAPTER  SEVENTEEN 


Skepticism  As  October  i,  the  day  for  opening  our  doors  to 
students,  approached,  the  skeptical  general  public 
showed  little  enthusiasm  over  the  establishment  of 
a  new  university  in  California.  Indeed,  some 
cynics  declared  that  it  was  "a  real  estate  specu- 
lation/' quite  regardless  of  the  fact  that  Mr.  Stan- 
ford did  not  then  own  even  the  land  on  which  his 
Palo  Alto  residence  stood,  all  his  holdings  in  Santa 
Clara  County  having  been  inalienably  deeded  to 
the  institution.  Voicing  another  point  of  view, 
the  New  York  Mail  and  Express  said  that  there 
was  "as  much  need  of  a  new  university  in  Cali- 
fornia as  for  an  asylum  for  decayed  sea-captains  in 
Switzerland/'  and  prophesied  that  for  years  to  come 
the  professors  would  "lecture  in  marble  halls  to 
empty  benches." 

Nearer  home,  our  colleagues  in  the  State  Univer- 
sity, though  personally  most  friendly,  saw  only  a 
gloomy  outlook  ahead  for  both  institutions,  as  was 
soon  made  clear.  In  September  the  Stanford  profes- 
sors already  on  hand  were  given  a  dinner  by  the 
California  faculty,  on  which  occasion  a  conspicuous 
member  of  the  latter,  Dr.  Bernard  Moses  of  the 
chair  of  Political  Science,  made  the  speech  of  wel- 
come. Incidentally  he  explained  that  the  Uni- 
versity of  California  had  only  400  students  in  all, 
and  only  150  young  people  were  each  year  prepared 
for  college  in  the  state;  the  opening  of  another 
institution,  therefore,  if  it  insisted  on  the  standards 

IT  3943 


1891]    Higher  Education  in  California 

prevailing  at  Berkeley,  would  mean  simply  a  division 
of  the  number,  while  a  lowered  standard  would  be 
fatal  to  higher  education  in  the  state  generally,  as 
well  as  to  the  ideals  which  California  had  stead- 
fastly maintained. 

From  other  speakers  also  we  received  advice  and  Advice 
warning  —  some   of   it    a   bit   superfluous,    for   the  and  . 
California  faculty  was  then  composed  partly  of  its  warmng 
own  graduates,  though  a  few  of  the  higher  places 
were  held  by  men  called  years  before  from  Yale 
and  Michigan.     The  Stanford  aggregation,  on  the 
contrary,    although    small    at    the    time,    bore    the 
stamp  of  various  institutions  in  the  East  and  in 
Europe. 


It  need  hardly  be  said  that  educational  conditions  in  Call-  Changed 
fornia  have  changed   amazingly  since   1891.     During  the  in-  conditions 
terval  its  population  has  risen  from  2,000,000  to  about  3,800,000, 
while  the  number  of  high  school  students — 138,600  in  1919, 
with  some  35,000  graduates  —  is  now  upward  of  200  times 
that  of  1891.     Part  of  the  increased  appreciation  of  advanced 
education  was  due,  especially  at  first,  to  the  liberalizing  in- 
fluence of  Stanford  University. 


For  the  opening  exercises  a  platform  was  erected  ro- 
under the  arch  at  the  north  end  of  the  Quadrangle,  ope 
and  in  the  Court  seats  were  placed  for  the  students    ay 
and  the  1500  others  who  formed  the  body  of  the 
audience.    As  is  usual  in  early  October,  the  day  was 
brilliant.     Addresses  were  made  by  Senator   Stan- 
ford,  by  Judge    Shafter   as   representative    of  the 
board  of  trustees,  and  by  myself.    In  my  discourse 
I  ventured  to  portray  the  future  of  a  new  and  well- 

C  395  3 


The  Days  of  a  Man  1:1891 

A  true       endowed  university,  framed  in  a  beautiful  setting, 

Golden       "hallowed  by  no  traditions  and  hampered  by  none, 

its  finger  posts  all  pointing  forward.''     The  true 

"Golden  Age"  of  California  began,  I  said,  when  its 

gold  was  used  for  purposes  like  that.1 

Fifteen  professors  only  composed  the  faculty  on 
the  opening  day  —  this  at .  the  earnest  request  of 
Mr.  Stanford,  who  feared  that  the  presumably 
small  number  of  students  the  first  year  would  cause 
a  larger  group  to  seem  absurd.  Several  others  had 
been  engaged,  however,  to  begin  their  work  later  on, 
and  necessity  forced  us  to  increase  the  original 
number  without  delay. 

The  first         In  selecting  the  initial  faculty  I  chose  first,  as 
faculty  of    already  indicated,  a  few  thoroughly  tested  men  from 

Stanford  J  .  .  '     T      ..  TVT  •  •  r      l_ 

University  the  University  or  Indiana.  Next,  in  view  or  the 
founder's  strong  preference  for  Cornell  as  well  as 
my  own  knowledge  and  tendencies,  I  selected  several 
from  that  institution.  A  number  of  others,  es- 
pecially in  the  languages,  came  from  Johns  Hopkins, 
then  the  recognized  center  of  advanced  study. 
From  Harvard  I  was  able  to  secure  none  the  first 
year,  because  the  best  of  its  actual  staff  seemed 
"earmarked"  for  retention  and  promotion.  As  a 
rule,  also,  it  was  my  conviction  (founded  on  ex- 
perience) that  men  from  Cornell,  Wisconsin,  Michi- 
gan, and  other  parts  of  the  West  in  general  would 
fit  themselves  more  readily  to  the  pioneer  life  of  a 
new  institution. 

Most  of  the  members  of  the  original  faculty 
began  as  assistant  professors  at  salaries  ranging 
from  $3000  to  $3500.  For  higher  positions  I  had 
tried  to  secure  men  of  established  fame  about  whose 

1  For  address  in  full  see  Appendix  B  (page  688). 

C3963 


1891]  Choice  of  Professors 

eminence  there  could  be  no  question,  and  to  them 
we  were  prepared  to  pay  $7000. 

Among  scholars  of  this  class  with  whom  I  entered  into  cor- 
respondence were  Ira  Remsen  in  Chemistry,  Thomas  C.  Men- 
denhall  in  Physics,  John  B.  McMaster  and  George  L.  Burr 
in  History,  Edmund  B.  Wilson  in  Zoology,  Jacob  G.  Schur- 
man  and  Josiah  Royce  in  Philosophy,  George  Chrystal  (of 
Edinburgh)  in  Mathematics,  James  Bright  in  English  Phi- 
lology, Irving  P.  Church  in  Mechanics,  William  E.  Henry  in 
Agriculture,  Horatio  S.  White  in  German,  Jeremiah  W.  Jenks 
in  Economics,  Rufus  B.  Richardson  in  Greek,  and  others 
whose  subsequent  records  have  fully  justified  my  judgment. 

But  of  such  men  of  recognized  reputation,  al- 
ready receiving  adequate  salaries,  only  two  —  John 
C.  Branner  and  John  M.  Stillman  —  were  willing  to 
make  the  venture.  For  it  was  undoubtedly  a  risk 
to  go  so  far  from  the  intellectual  centers  of  the 
nation  —  an  even  greater  one  to  join  an  institution 
as  yet  unorganized,  with  libraries  and  laboratories 
still  to  be  developed.  That  being  the  situation,  I  Turning 
was  obliged  to  turn  to  the  younger  scholars,  trusting  toy°unzer 
in  my  own  judgment .  as  to  their  probable  future 
growth.  Of  this  course  the  Stanfords  heartily  ap- 
proved; and  no  one  older  than  I  (then  forty  years 
old)  received  appointment  except  as  a  non-resident 
lecturer. 

Only  one  professor  was  in  any  sense  selected  by 
Mr.  Stanford,  and  as  to  the  others  he  made  practi- 
cally no  suggestion.  He  did,  however,  say  that  his 
old  friend,  Dr.  John  D.  W.  Stillman,  had  left  a  son, 
Dr.  John  Maxson  Stillman,  a  graduate  in  Chemistry 
from  the  University  of  California,  who  had  also  t 
studied  in  Europe,  had  later  taught  in  his  Alma 
Mater,  and  was  then  serving  as  a  professional 

C  397  3 


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chemist  in  Boston.  Would  I  look  him  up  and,  if  his 
attainments  and  personality  seemed  satisfactory, 
consider  him  for  a  position  ? 

On  visiting  Boston,  therefore,  I  went  out  to 
Brookline  to  see  Dr.  Stiiiman,  and  being  thoroughly 
pleased,  at  once  offered  him  our  chair  of  Chemistry. 
This  he  as  promptly  accepted,  declining  to  consider 
an  advance  from  his  company,  for  that,  he  said, 
would  only  tend  to  confuse  his  mind.  We  thus 
secured  one  of  the  wisest  teachers  I  have  ever 
known,  and  one  of  the  most  thoroughly  beloved; 
his  dear  wife,  I  may  add,  has  ably  seconded  him  in 
every  relation  and  few  other  Stanford  homes  have 
contributed  as  much  as  theirs  to  the  social  well- 
being  of  our  community.  Stiiiman  remained  for 
twenty-six  years  in  active  service  at  the  head  of  his 
department.  On  my  acceptance  of  the  chancellor- 
ship in  1913,  he  became  vice-president  of  the  institu- 
tion, retiring  on  August  i,  1917,  at  the  conventional 
age  limit  of  sixty-five  years. 

The  From  the  University  of  Indiana  came  Branner  in  Geology, 

Indiana  Swain  in  Mathematics,  Gilbert  in  Zoology,  and  Campbell  in 
group  Botany.  The  Indiana  group  included  also  Earl  Barnes  (then 
recently  from  Cornell)  in  Education,  and  a  few  younger  men 
as  assistants.  Among  the  latter  was  John  A.  Miller,  an  ad- 
mirable teacher  of  Mathematics,  since  professor  of  Astronomy 
at  Swarthmore.  With  Branner,  Swain,  and  Gilbert  my  readers 
are  already  very  familiar,  but  Dr.  Campbell  needs  a  second 
introduction.  A  graduate  of  the  University  of  Michigan,  he 
afterward  spent  considerable  time  in  Germany,  acquiring  there 
a  reputation  for  methodical  work  and  brilliant  technique.  As 
a  scientific  investigator  he  ranks  with  the  first  in  his  field,  being 
at  the  same  time  greatly  admired  by  his  associates  as  an  ac- 
complished man  of  wide  experience  and  travel. 

Charles  David  Marx,  our  professor  of  Civil  Engineering,  a 
graduate  of  Cornell  and  formerly  assistant  professor  there, 

n  398  n 


CHARLES  DAVID  MARX        RAY  LYMAN  WILBUR 


EDWARD  CURTIS 
FRANKLIN 


DOUGLAS  HOUGHTON 
CAMPBELL 


1891]  A  Strong  Team 

came  to  us  from  the  University  of  Wisconsin.  It  had  once  been 
my  good  fortune  to  ride  with  Marx  by  train  from  Geneva  to 
Ithaca,  on  which  occasion  I  was  strongly  impressed  by  his 
energy,  enthusiasm,  and  solid  good  sense.  I  may  add  that  in 
the  twenty-five  years  during  which  we  were  associated  at 
Stanford,  my  first  favorable  judgment  was  continuously 
strengthened;  as  "Daddy  Marx"  he  is  the  idol  of  generations 
of  engineers,  and  his  unselfish  services  to  the  town  of  Palo 
Alto  have  won  him  the  gratitude  of  all  his  neighbors. 

From  Nebraska,  as  professor  of  Economics,  I  called  Dr.   Somt  of 
Amos  Griswold  Warner,  one  of  the  best  teachers  and  finest  thf  "Old 
characters  of  my  acquaintance,  thoroughly  respected  and  be-  Guard 
loved  by  every  one.    Unfortunately  his  health  was  precarious. 
During  the  great  railway  strike  of  1893  which  affected  all  the 
railroads  west  of  Chicago,  he  was  obliged  to  travel  at  night  from 
Sacramento  to  San  Francisco  on  the  open  deck  of  a  steamer, 
and  so  contracted  a  violent  cold;    this  developed  into  tuber- 
culosis, of  which  he  died  after  some  years  of  exile  in  New 
Mexico. 

George  Mann  Richardson,  formerly  with  Remsen  at  Johns 
Hopkins,  left  a  professorship  in  Lehigh  to  take  our  work  in 
Organic  Chemistry.  As  chairman  of  the  Committee  on  Stu- 
dent Affairs,  Dr.  Richardson  showed  remarkable  skill,  dealing 
so  fairly  —  even  when  severely  —  with  delinquents  that  he 
generally  left  them  feeling  he  was  really  a  friend.  But  not- 
withstanding his  extraordinary  muscular  strength,  in  1902  he 
fell  victim  to  an  insidious  kidney  disease. 

Melville  Best  Anderson,  long  my  friend  and  sometime 
colleague,  resigned  from  the  University  of  Iowa  to  fill  our  chair 
of  English  Literature,  in  which  field  I  have  known  no  more 
effective  teacher.  Dr.  Anderson  remained  on  the  Stanford 
faculty  for  twenty-two  years,  resigning  at  the  expiration  of 
that  period  to  accept  a  Carnegie  Pension  awarded  to  enable 
him  to  carry  on  studies  at  Florence,  a  fine  new  metrical  trans- 
lation of  Dante's  "Divina  Commedia"  being  the  literary 
work  of  his  life. 

Fernando  Sanford,  a  student  of  Helmholtz  in  Berlin  and 
an  active  investigator,  was  called  from  Lake  Forest  to  our 
chair  of  Physics,  a  position  acceptably  held  by  him  until  his 
retirement  as  emeritus  in  1919.  Dr.  Oliver  Peebles  Jenkins 

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The  Days  of  a  Man  £1891 

left  De  Pauw  to  accept  our  chair  of  Physiology,  from  which  he 
retired  as  emeritus  in  1916.  James  Owen  Griffin,  who  had 
acquired  at  Cornell  a  reputation  for  remarkable  patience  and 
skill  in  teaching,  took  up  the  work  in  German,  retiring  as 
emeritus  in  1916. 

Not  all  Besides  those  enumerated  above,  most  of  whom  remained 

remained  permanently  at  Stanford,  a  number  of  others  belonged  to  the 
original  group  but  sooner  or  later  resigned  to  take  positions 
elsewhere.  Among  these  were  Dr.  George  E.  Howard  (in 
History)  from  the  University  of  Nebraska,  to  which  institu- 
tion he  afterward  returned;  Dr.  Henry  A.  Todd  (in  French) 
from  Johns  Hopkins,  soon  called  to  Columbia;  Samuel  J.  Brun 
(his  assistant)  from  Cornell,  later  an  attorney  in  San  Fran- 
cisco; Ernest  M.  Pease  (in  Latin)  from  Smith,  afterward  en- 
gaged in  business;  and  Dr.  Thomas  D.  Wood  (in  Organic 
Training)  from  Harvard,  since  1900  a  professor  at  Columbia. 
Two  others,  Horace  B.  Gale  (in  Mechanical  Engineering)  and 
Dr.  Arthur  G.  Laird  (in  Greek),  remained  for  one  year 
only. 

Dr.  William  Howard  Miller,  reputed  to  be  one  of  the  most 
brilliant  graduates  of  Johns  Hopkins,  came  as  assistant  pro- 
fessor in  Mathematics  but  died  of  tuberculosis  before  the  end 
of  the  year.  A  fine  sonnet  in  his  honor,  "First  Dead  of  Stan- 
ford Scholars,"  was  written  by  his  colleague,  Martin  W.  Samp- 
son, who  joined  our  ranks  in  January. 

The  chair  of  Entomology,  established  in  anticipation  of  a 
School  of  Agriculture  (never  developed),  I  offered  to  Corn- 
stock,  the  leading  teacher  in  his  field.  But  by  special  arrange- 
ment covering  a  period  of  three  years,  he  divided  his  time 
equally  between  Cornell  and  Stanford,  thus  laying  the  founda- 
tion of  our  strong  department  of  Entomology. 

As  librarian  came  Edwin  Hamlin  Woodruff,  a  Cornell  man, 
then  in  charge  of  the  Fiske  Library  in  Florence,  and  so 
eminently  fitted  to  gather  books  for  the  new  institution.  Wood- 
ruff was  later  transferred  to  a  professorship  of  law,  a  position 
even  more  to  his  taste,  from  which  he  was  called  to  the  new 
Law  School  at  Cornell,  of  which  he  afterward  became  dean. 

During  the  year  additional  teachers  were  needed.  Among 
those  newly  appointed  were:  in  English,  three  young  scholars, 
Alphonso  G.  Newcomer,  a  Cornell  graduate  of  admirable 

C  400  3 


1891]  The  Pioneer  Faculty 

literary  ability,  much  beloved,  whose  untimely  death  occurred 
in  1914,  Sampson,  from  the  University  of  Iowa,  since  professor 
at  Cornell,  and,  from  Indiana  University,  Edward  Howard 
Griggs,  afterward  a  very  popular  public  lecturer;  in  Graphic 
Arts,  Bolton  Coit  Brown,  a  graduate  of  Cornell,  then  from  the 
University  of  Syracuse,  who  later  resigned  to  devote  his 
whole  time  to  painting;  and  in  Mathematics,  Charles  E.  Cox 
from  the  University  of  the  Pacific,  who  afterward  went  into 
business  in  San  Jose.  

The  ability  to  do  one's  best  under  varying  circum- 
stances and  unforeseen  trials  was  distinctly  a  quality 
of  most  members  of  the  pioneer  Stanford  faculty, 
and  stood  us  in  good  stead  later  on.  Several  of 
them  I  had  known  for  years,  and  I  should  have 
selected  other  personal  acquaintances  except  for  the 
fear  of  running  too  much  in  one  groove.  Afterward 
some  of  my  new  colleagues  expressed  regret  that  I 
had  not  put  in  "more  of  my  friends"  -that  is, 
more  men  with  whose  personal  equation  I  was 
thoroughly  familiar. 

Following  President  White's  plan  at  Cornell,  I  Non- 
early  arranged  for  a  system  of  non-resident  pro- 
fessors,  men  of  distinction  who  should  supplement 
by  lectures  of  an  inspiring  kind  the  regular  courses 
of  study.  My  first  choice  naturally  fell  on  White 
himself,  and  in  the  spring  of  1892  he  came  out  to 
Stanford  to  give  a  course  in  Modern  European 
History.  A  year  later  Dr.  Jacob  Gould  Schurman 
(soon  after  elected  president  of  Cornell)  gave  some 
lectures  in  Philosophy;  and  ex-President  Harrison 
addressed  us  on  International  Law,  in  the  fall  of 
1893.  In  this  last  connection  I  quote  the  following 
from  one  of  Senator  Stanford's  letters  to  me,  dated 
from  Washington,  D.  C,  March  10,  1893 

t  401  3 


The  Days  of  a  Man  £1891 

Harrison  President  Harrison  .  .  .  has  agreed  to  deliver  a  course  of 

on  Inter*  lectures  next  fall.  ...  I  want  him  particularly  to  take  up 
national  ^  subject  of  International  Law,  and  the  importance  of  having 
the  civilized  nations  of  the  earth  agree  upon  a  Code.  Com- 
munication between  nations  is  becoming  so  close  and  intimate 
that  the  time  is  not  far  distant  when  war  as  a  means  of  settling 
their  disputes  will  be  impossible.  I  think  that  arbitration  is 
in  harmony  with  the  present  advanced  civilization  of  most  of 
the  great  nations  of  the  earth. 

Mr.  Harrison  gave  an  excellent  though  rather  di- 
dactic course  of  lectures  which  were  later  published 
as  a  volume  entitled  "Views  of  an  ex- President." 

From  1893  onward  to  the  end  of  my  adminis- 
tration, lack  of  funds  caused  by  litigation  and 
earthquake  damage  made  it  impossible  to  provide 
for  any  more  non-resident  professorships. 

3 

Adventur-  Professors  alone  do  not  make  a  university;  on 
ous  youth  tne  Open;ng  day  465  students  were  admitted  at 
Stanford.  These  adventurous  scholars  came  from 
all  over  the  world,  but  especially  from  the  Middle 
West.  Naturally  the  greater  number,  about  350  all 
told,  entered  as  freshmen.  As  for  those  in  the 
higher  classes,  they  had  in  general  followed  favorite 
professors  from  the  East.  Practically  all  were 
lodged  in  the  two  dormitories  made  ready  only  a 
few  days  before. 

Presiding  as  mistress  of  Roble  Hall  was  Ellen  Thompson, 
a  graduate  of  the  University  of  Michigan,  and  sister  of  my  old 
friend,  Will  Thompson,  of  the  Indianapolis  High  School. 
Miss  Thompson's  position,  retained  by  her  for  five  years, 
virtually  corresponded  to  that  of  dean  of  women.  With  a 
charming  personality  and  gentle  and  lovable  nature,  she  ex- 
erted a  marked  influence  for  good  in  the  early  days. 

C  402  I] 


1891]  Pioneer  Students 

Bert  Fesler,  one  of  my  former  Indiana  students,  now  dis- 
trict judge  in  Minnesota,  was  master  of  Encina  Hall,  a  posi- 
tion filled  by  him  for  one  year  with  firmness  and  justice.  But 
the  entire  lack  of  tradition  among  a  body  of  students  drawn 
from  all  parts  of  the  country  made  the  duties  extremely  com- 
plex and  trying  until  the  colts  were  fairly  broken.  After  varied 
experiences,  control  was  finally  put  in  the  hands  of  the  residents 
themselves  through  the  so-called  "Encina  Club,"  an  arrange- 
ment on  the  whole  satisfactory. 

In   charge  of  the   boarding   arrangements   at   Encina  was  Handling 
George  Adderson,  formerly  an  English  butler.     Tall,  heavily  Encina 
built,  and  with  face  and  beard  strongly  suggestive  of  pictures 
of  the  Almighty  in  certain  religious  books,   he  was  also  fre- 
quently identified  as  Santa  Claus.    He  had  a  loud  voice,  gruff 
exterior,  and  kind  heart  —  a  combination  contributing  both  to 
fear  and  affection.    The  business  of  feeding  students,  however, 
is  a  somewhat  thankless  job  and  after  a  time  it  was  turned 
over  to  private  enterprise. 

In  the  course  of  the  first  week  occurred  an  episode 
characteristic  of  the  happy-go-lucky  type  of  some 
of  our  younger  boys.  On  the  railway  switch  running 
up  to  the  University  stood  an  empty  flat  car,  tempt- 
ing to  some  sort  of  prank.  Crowding  upon  it, 
therefore,  a  group  of  dare-devils  started  it  off  and 
spun  down  the  grade  to  the  main  track  at  May- 
field,  where  -they  finally  succeeded  in  stopping.  No 
real  harm  was  done,  but  a  tragic  wreck  would  have 
ensued  had  they  met  a  moving  train. 

As  a  matter  of  fact,   however,  general   student 
morale  was  high  from  the  beginning,  and  the  early 
leaders  took  seriously  the  duty  of  initiating  rational 
and  wholesome  customs.     Those  who  found  them-  Dropped 
selves   out   of  harmony   soon   left   the   university,  °£ffof 
either  of  their  own  accord  or  "by  request,"  being  the  campus 
then,  according  to  accepted  phraseology,  "dropped 
off  the  edge  of  the  campus."    Before  the  first  week 

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The  Days  of  a  Man  £1891 

NO  had  passed,  the  "Student  Body,"  already  organized, 

smoking      passed  a  resolution  that  there  should  be  no  smoking 

l^uad-        in  the  Quadrangle  (for  which  we  all  felt  a  kind  of 

Tangle        reverence)   nor  in  any  of  the  academic  buildings. 

The  tradition  then  established  has  ever  since  been 

respected  by  both  students  and  faculty. 

As  to  the  official  relation  of  the  University  to 
religion  and  morals,  Mr.  Stanford  had  clearly  ex- 
pressed his  general  purpose  in  the  grant  of  endow- 
ment. At  the  outset  one  of  the  buildings  of  the 
Inner  Quadrangle  was  accordingly  set  aside  to  serve 
as  temporary  Chapel,1  and  there,  for  ten  years,  as 
Sunday  I  have  said,  the  University  conducted  regular  Sunday 
services  services,  the  sermons  being  delivered  by  neighboring 
clergymen,  occasional  visitors  from  the  East,  and 
certain  members  of  the  faculty,  especially  Dr. 
Thoburn,  to  whom  I  shall  soon  pay  my  tribute. 
The  institution  being  non-sectarian,  no  line  was 
drawn  among  religious  organizations.  One  of  our 
most  welcome  preachers,  for  example,  was  Rabbi 
Jacob  Voorsanger  of  San  Francisco.  Others  were 
Dr.  Charles  R.  Brown,  then  pastor  of  a  Con- 
gregational church  in  Oakland  and  now  dean  of 
the  Yale  Divinity  School,  Dr.  Horatio  Stebbins 
of  the  First  Unitarian  Church  of  San  Francisco, 
and  Dr.  Robert  Mackenzie  of  the  First  Presby- 
terian. 

The  theory  and  practice  of  religious  teaching  as 
it  appeared  at  Stanford  were  early  trenchantly  dis- 
cussed by  a  sophomore  of  the  day,  Arthur  M.  Cath- 
cart,  since  a  member  of  the  law  faculty.  In  a  student 
publication,2  he  writes  as  follows : 

1  Now  known  as  "the  Little  Theater." 

2  The  Sequoia,  Vol.  Ill,  page  21;  1894. 

C  404  3 


1891]  Religious  Services 

When  the  student  first  comes  to  Palo  Alto,  he  finds  him- 
self in  a  very  liberal  atmosphere.  He  hears  beliefs  which  may 
have  seemed  too  holy  for  mortals  to  question  discussed  with 
the  utmost  freedom.  He  soon  learns  that  if  his  religious  opin- 
ions are  to  be  respected  by  the  thinking  class  of  students,  he 
must  put  them  on  a  rationalistic  basis.  Instead  of  blindly  ac- 
cepting what  he  has  been  taught  at  home,  he  begins  to  ask 
himself,  "Why  do  I  believe  as  I  do?"  That  question  asked, 
he  has  then  cut  the  cable  which  moored  his  bark  in  the  quiet 
harbor  of  orthodoxy,  and  it  is  now  rudderless  and  without  a 
compass  on  the  stormy  sea  of  doubt.  Where  he  will  land  de- 
pends upon  the  current  in  which  he  is  drifting.  .  .  .  Our 
student  at  last  discovers  that  the  university  believes  in  "the 
immortality  of  the  soul  and  the  existence  of  an  all-wise  and 
beneficent  Creator."  "That  obedience  of  His  laws  is  the 
highest  duty  of  man"  is  a  necessary  inference. 

With  the  completion  of  the  Church  in  1901,  a 
resident  chaplaincy  was  established,  the  incumbent 
to  be  free  for  the  time  being  from  ecclesiastical 
control  and  to  be  assisted  as  occasion  arose  by 
outside  clergymen.  Dr.  R.  Heber  Newton  of  New 
York,  the  first  appointee,  was  soon  succeeded  by 
Dr.  D.  Charles  Gardner  who  had  served  as  his 
assistant.  Gardner  has  filled  his  position  for  eighteen  Our 
years  with  the  general  approval  of  students  and  $adre 
professors.  A  broad-minded  man  with  the  kindest 
of  hearts,  he  holds  the  respect  and  affection  of  all, 
whether  churchgoers  or  not;  and  to  those  in  trouble 
or  anguish,  either  mental  or  physical,  he  is  ever  a 
good  shepherd. 

4 

On  the  opening  day  appeared  the  first  issue  of  a  "Tbf Daily 
student  paper,  The  Palo  Alto.  This  clever  publi-  paloAUo" 
cation  of  a  distinctly  lively  and  original  character 

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The  Days  of  a  Man  £1891 

was  the  private  venture  of  two  young  men,  Holbrook 
Blinn  and  Chester  Bailey  Fernald.  The  second 
year  it  was  taken  over  by  the  Student  Body,  and  as 
The  Daily  Palo  Alto  —  familiarly  "The  D.P.A."  or 
"Dippy"  —  has  ever  since  been  the  chronicle  of 
college  news. 

Both  Blinn  and  Fernald  afterward  became  conspicuous  in 
dramatic  circles  in  London  and  New  York,  the  first  as  an  actor, 
the  second  as  a  playwright.  And  Blinn  has  more  than  once 
remarked  that  his  determination  to  succeed  was  shaped  by  an 
epigram  of  mine  in  a  talk  to  the  students,  "The  world  turns 
aside  to  let  any  man  pass  who  knows  whither  he  is  going." 

"  The  With  the  second  year  was  born  The  Sequoia,  then 

equo  a  weekly  literary  journal.  Looking  over  its  early 
pages,  I  find  them  remarkable  for  the  skill  and 
ingenuity  shown  by  some  of  the  writers,  especially 
in  lyrics  and  short  stories.  Several  of  these  con- 
tributors afterward  became  successful  as  newspaper 
correspondents,  college  professors,  or  writers  of  short 
stories. 

Notable  among  them  were  "Carolus  Ager,"  Charles  K. 
Field,  '95,  now  editor  of  Sunset;  Will  Irwin,  '99,  the  sane  and 
accurate  war  correspondent;  his  brother1  Wallace,  ex-'oo,  dis- 
tinguished for  satirical  verse  and  character  sketches;  Dane 
Coolidge,  '98,  story-teller  of  the  Southwest;  Bristow  Adams, 
'oo,  now  of  the  forestry  department  of  Cornell;  William  W. 
Guth,  '95,  president  of  Goucher  College,  Baltimore;  Edward 
Maslin  Hulme,  '97,  professor  of  History  in  the  University  of 
Idaho;  William  J.  Neidig,  '96,  and  Sarah  Comstock,  '96, 
writers  of  special  articles  and  short  stories;  Isaac  Russell,  '04, 
Thoreau  Cronyn,  '03,  and  John  M.  Oskison,  '98,  journalists 
in  Chicago  and  New  York;  and  Walter  M.  Rose,  '95,  a  superior 
student  of  law  and  author  of  an  important  legal  digest. 

Our  humorous  paper,   The   Chaparral,1   launched 

1  See  Chapter  xvi,  page  389. 

C  406  3 


1891]  Varied  Talents 

in  1895  by  Bristow  Adams,  usually  holds  its  own  "The 
among  journals  of  college  fun,  though  in  later  years  ChaParral" 
it  has  rarely  equaled  the  high  standard  set  by  its 
founder. 

In  early  years,  at  least,  the  Stanford  Student  Early 
Body  contained  an  unusually  large  number  of  cbaracters 
original  and  varied  characters  drawn  to  the  new 
institution  from  all  parts  of  the  country,  and  repre- 
senting almost  every  conceivable  form  of  talent  or 
genius.  This  was  peculiarly  true  of  the  "Pioneer 
Class"  which  graduated  in  1895,  and  its  successor 
of  1896,  as  well  as  of  the  three  smaller  preceding 
classes  composed  of  students  from  other  institutions. 
A  history  of  those  present  on  the  opening  day,  for 
instance,  would  make  a  striking  record.  A  few  of 
them  I  have  just  mentioned.  Of  several  others  I 
shall  also  speak  without,  I  hope,  suggesting  in- 
vidious distinctions. 

Wilbur  W.  Thoburn,  a  graduate  of  Allegheny 
College,  entered  as  an  advanced  student  in  Zoology, 
though  the  admirable  quality  of  his  work  and  his 
noble  personality  brought  him  almost  at  once  into 
the  teaching  staff,  where  he  ultimately  became  pro- 
fessor of  Bionomics.  His  influence  for  good  over 
students  I  have  never  seen  surpassed,  and  no  one 
has  since  stepped  into  the  place  he  made  for  himself. 
A  minister  by  original  purpose,  he  served  as  a  sort 
of  unofficial  chaplain  whose  primacy  in  religion  as 
applied  to  conduct  was  unquestioned.  His  uni- 
versity lectures  dealt  mainly  with  organic  evolu- 
tion, of  the  theory  of  which  he  was  a  convinced  and 
effective  exponent.  After  his  death  in  January,  1899, 
the  notes  of  his  moral  talks  to  students  were  pieced 

C  407  3 


The  Days  of  a  Man  £1891 

together  by  Dr.  Elliott  in  a  very  helpful  book  en- 

titlcd  «  Jn  Terms  of  Life r  ! 

Some  years  later,  Professor  L.  P.  Jacks  of  Oxford, 
editor  of  The  Hibbert  Journal,  asked  me  to  write  on 
"The  Religion  of  a  Sensible  American."  In  this 
article  (afterward  reprinted  in  book  form)  I  gave 
an  analysis  of  Thoburn's  thought  and  influence. 
From  a  Phi  Beta  Kappa  poem,  "  Prayer,"  written 
by  Mr.  Field  in  memory  of  Dr.  Thoburn,  I  quote 
the  following,  though  it  is  a  matter  of  regret  to 
break  the  finely  balanced  thought  of  the  whole: 

Prayer  Voice  un forgo tten !    once  your  message  came, 

Set  in  a  quiet  sentence; 

Prayer,  if  it  be  such  deep  desire 

For  good  that  it  shall  realize 

Its  hope  in  action,  may  aspire 

To  answer  and  not  otherwise! 

So  spake  that  voice,  and  prayer  became 

A  force,  no  more  an  empty  name! 

And  over  faith's  inverted  cup 

A  gleaming  Grail  was  lifted  up. 


Right  thinking  ever  turned  to  act 
Shall  make  unceasing  prayer  a  fact; 
And  prayer,  thus  answered,  shall  allow 
A  larger  faith  and  teach  it  how 
To  find  its  heaven  here  and  now! 

In  this  tribute,  his  finest  accomplishment,  Field 
portrays  an  underlying  and  fundamental  emotion. 

1  A  sentence  from  one  of  Thoburn's  addresses  —  "Believe  and  venture: 
as  for  pledges  the  gods  give  non  "  —  has  always  seemed  to  me  singularly 
pregnant  with  meaning.  I  do  not  now  know  whether  it  was  original  with  him. 
It  might  well  be,  though  it  has  a  Greek  flavor.  Mr.  Nathan  Haskell  Dole 
tells  me  that  he  does  not  find  it  anywhere.  He  observes:  "As  a  guess  I  should 
have  attributed  the  apothegm  to  Emerson.  It  has  also  the  ring  of  the  Schiller- 
Goethe  Xenien.  But  for  authority  I  can  give  none." 

C408] 


18913      A  Master  Idealist-Organizer 

His  volume,  "Four-leaved  Clover,"  dealing  with 
fancies  both  grave  and  gay,  forms  a  delightful 
record  in  verse  of  much  that  gave  color  to  the  early 
days  at  Stanford.  None  of  our  other  versifiers  had 
his  light  and  joyous  touch,  a  poetic  link  between 
him  and  his  father's  well-known  cousin,  Eugene 
Field. 

But  to  speak  of  "Charlie  Field"  is  to  think  of  Shirley 
Baker,  his  mate,  another  "Pioneer,"  whose  fine  voice  and 
lovable  personality  lent  joy  to  every  gathering  at  which  he 
appeared.  When  these  two  graduated,  our  community  lost 
something  of  its  characteristic  flavor.  The  appearance  the 
next  autumn  at  the  Football  Show  of  the  "Bakersfield  Brothers" 
dressed  as  "hoboes"  and  singing  an  original  song  entitled  "In 
the  Cold,  Cold  World,"  indicated  that  life  for  them,  also,  had 
perhaps  taken  on  a  somewhat  sterner  cast!  

The  best  known  of  all  the  graduates  of  Stanford  Hoover 
(because  probably  the  best-known  man  in  all  the 
world)  is  Herbert  Clark  Hoover,  also  of  the  "Pioneer 
Class"  and  the  first  one  to  whom  I  assigned  a  room 
in  Encina  Hall,  this  being  No.  38.  His  varied 
experiences  and  accomplishments  as  mining  engi- 
neer, corporation  director,  investment  expert,  rescuer 
of  American  tourists  in  Europe,  savior  of  Belgium 
and  northern  France,  United  States  Food  Adminis- 
trator, World  Food  Controller,  Chairman  of  Ameri- 
can Relief  Administration,  European  Children's 
Fund,  and  founder  of  American  Relief  Warehouses  1 
abroad,  have  served  as  the  theme  of  many  records 
and  eulogies.  Into  this  fascinating  story  I  need  not 
go,  for  it  has  recently  been  fully  dealt  with  in  two 

1  The  last  two  chanties  organized  and  conducted  solely  in  his  capacity  as 
a  private  citizen.  More  recently  as  Chairman  of  the  European  Relief  Council, 
made  up  of  eight  great  American  relief  societies,  he  has  undertaken  to  nourish 
and  nurse  3,500,000  children  in  Eastern  and  Central  Europe. 

C  409  3 


The  Days  of  a  Man  1:1891 

delightful  biographies  of  wide  circulation,  the  one  by 
Vernon  Kellogg,  the  other  by  Rose  Wilder  Lane  and 
Field,  Hoover's  college  intimate. 

Added  to  the  unflinching  idealism  already  fore- 
shadowed in  youth,  Hoover  has  shown  in  mature 
years  a  degree  of  administrative  capacity  never 
surpassed;  no  other  man,  moreover,  has  so  broad 
an  outlook  on  world  political  and  economic  relations. 
The  highest  motive  of  his  life,  withal,  is  a  spirit  of 
helpfulness,  and  millions  now  speak  his  name  with 
gratitude!  Meanwhile  his  gifted  wife,  Lou  Henry, 

—  also  a  Stanford  graduate  in  Geology  and  Mining, 

—  supports  him  in  every  endeavor  with  devotion 
and  self-forgetfulness.    Thus  in  both,  character  and 
opportunity  seem  to  have  combined  to  bring  native 
ability  to  flower  and  fruitage. 

In  1909  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Hoover  undertook  a  huge 
literary  task,  the  translation  of  the  oldest  mono- 
graph on  mining,  Agricola's  "De  Re  Metaiiica" 
published  in  1556.  This  enormous  book,  dealing 
with  early  methods  and  written  in  crabbed,  medieval 
Latin  often  incomprehensible  to  one  not  familiar 
with  the  processes  described  was  turned  by  the  two 
experts  into  English  with  a  multitude  of  illuminating 
notes,  the  superb  finished  volume  reproducing  all 
the  plates  and  having  both  the  form  and  make-up 
of  the  original  vellum-bound  quarto. 

As  trustee  of  Stanford  University,  to  which  honor 
he  was  elected  in  1912,  Mr.  Hoover  has  rendered 
most  valuable  service,  especially  in  promoting  the 
personal  welfare  of  faculty  and  students. 


Theodore  J.   Hoover  followed   Herbert,   his   brother,   and 
took  up  the  same  line  of  work.    After  several  years  of  profes- 

C  410  3 


1891]  Pioneer  Women 

sional  success,  mainly  in  Europe,  he  returned  to  the  university 
in  1919  as  professor  of  Mining  Engineering.  Theodore,  like 
Herbert,  is  a  practical  idealist.  Roaming  as  a  student  over 
the  hills  of  Santa  Cruz  County,  he  came  upon  the  beautiful 
Waddell  Creek,  a  trout  stream  flowing  between  redwood- 
covered  heights  down  to  the  sea.  "When  my  ship  comes  in 
Pm  going  to  own  this  place,"  said  he.  That  cherished  plan 
was  carried  out  not  long  ago,  when  he  bought  2500  acres  of 
forest,  hill,  and  dale,  and  established  there  (besides  a  model 
farm)  his  hospitable  summer  home,  Casa  del  Oso.  

Among  the  young  women  entering  Stanford  Uni-  The 
versity  in  October,  1891,  were  many  of  superior 
scholarship  and  charming  personality.  These  and 
their  successors  contributed  in  a  marked  degree  to 
the  fine  atmosphere  of  the  early  years.  If  I  do  not 
particularize  to  any  extent,  it  is  partly  because  in 
the  nature  of  things  their  public  relations  are  usually 
less  conspicuous  than  those  of  the  young  men,  and 
several  married  graduates  whose  names  appear  in 
this  recital ;  indeed,  scores  of  the  happiest  homes  in 
my  acquaintance  are  those  of  Stanford  mates.  A 
number,  however,  entered  successfully  on  profes- 
sional careers. 

Of  these  last,  two  who  entered  in  the  fall  of  1892  have  long 
been  members  of  the  university  faculty.  Clelia  D.  Mosher 
added  to  her  preliminary  degrees  from  Stanford  that  of  Doctor 
of  Medicine  at  Johns  Hopkins.  From  1910  to  1919  she  held 
the  double  position  of  medical  adviser  and  of  director  of  physi- 
cal training  for  women,  having  been  only  recently  relieved 
of  the  latter  duty.  In  certain  lines  of  research  Dr.  Mosher's 
distinction  is  unquestioned.  As  medical  investigator  for  the 
Children's  Bureau  under  Dr.  William  P.  Lucas,  also  assistant 
and  later  associate  medical  adviser  to  the  Bureau  of  Refugees 
and  Relief,  she  served  the  American  Red  Cross  in  France 
during  two  years  of  the  war  with  conspicuous  usefulness  in  a 
large  variety  of  ways.  Dr.  Clara  S.  Stoltenberg  entered  the 


The  Days  of  a  Man  £1891 

faculty  immediately  upon  her  graduation  in  1896,  as  instructor 
in  Physiology,  'rising  to  the  rank  of  associate  professor  in  charge 
of  Neurology,  in  which  field  her  work  is  accurate  and  virile. 

In  1892  came  also  Irene  Hardy,  a  teacher  of  English  who 
had  been  molding  generations  of  eager  youth  in  the  Oakland 
High  School.  From  1894  to  1901  Miss  Hardy's  fine  influence 
made  itself  felt  in  the  department  of  English,  of  which  she 
had  become  an  assistant  professor.  She  was,  unfortunately, 
forced  to  retire  from  the  department  because  of  failing  eye- 
sight, which  has,  however,  not  dulled  her  exquisite  poetic 
fancy,  as  "  Skerryvore,"  received  as  I  write,  clearly  testifies. 

In  1893  Lillien  J.  Martin,  a  graduate  of  Vassar  and  teacher 
of  science  in  the  Girls'  High  School  of  San  Francisco,  came  for 
research  in  Psychology,  a  work  successfully  continued  at  the 
University  of  Gottingen  from  1894  to  1898.  The  following 
year  she  entered  the  Stanford  faculty  as  associate  professor  of 
Psychology,  retiring  as  emeritus  professor  in  1917.  Meanwhile 
the  high  quality  of  her  scholarship  had  won  her  the  honorary 
degree  of  Ph.D  from  the  University  of  Bonn.  Since  leaving 
Stanford,  Dr.  Martin  has  taken  up  in  San  Francisco  the  in- 
teresting and  relatively  new  profession  of  consulting  psy- 
chologist. _ 

Friends  Of  the  students  who  followed  favorite  professors 
fr°m  the  East,  all  entered  with  spirit  and  sympathy 
into  the  novel  conditions  prevailing  at  the  new  in- 
stitution sprung  up  like  a  mushroom  on  the  old 
Farm.  From  the  ranks  of  these  Argonauts  pro- 
fessors were  often  recruited  for  Stanford  and  other 
institutions,  but  limits  of  space  warn  me  against 
pursuing  this  fascinating  record  much  further.  I 
may,  however,  refer  to  a  few  more  disciples. 


es 


Charles  E.  Chadsey,  '92,  who  followed  Howard  and  Warner 
from  the  University  of  Nebraska,  and  long  known  as  one  of  the 
most  efficient  of  city  school  superintendents,  is  now  professor 
of  education  in  the  University  of  Illinois. 

Bradley  M.  Davis,  '92,  my  assistant  in  explorations  in  Colo- 

£4123 


Argonauts  of  1891 


rado,  now  professor  of  Botany  in  the  University  of  Michigan, 
was  at  hand  on  the  opening  day. 

A  favorite  former  student  of  Anderson  at  the  University 
of  Iowa  was  L.  Ward  Bannister,  '93,  now  a  leading  attorney 
at  Denver  and  a  national  authority  on  irrigation  law. 

Edwin  B.  Copeland,  '95,  son  of  my  old  associate  and  a 
botanist  of  repute,  sometime  dean  of  the  government  agri- 
cultural college  at  Los  Banos  in  the  Philippines,  is  now  a  rancher 
at  Chico. 

Caspar  W.  Hodgson,  '96,  a  teacher  in  Indiana  and  California 
before  he  entered  Stanford,  has  shown  his  staunch  devotion  in 
unique  fashion  by  undertaking  the  publication  of  these  memoirs 
under  the  imprint  of  the  house  established  by  him. 

Conspicuous  as  the  tallest  and  still  more  as  one  Wilbur 
of  the  keenest  and  most  influential  students,  was 
Ray  Lyman  Wilbur  of  the  class  of  1896,  later  as- 
sistant professor  of  Physiology,  next  professor  of 
General  Medicine  and  first  dean  of  the  Stanford 
Medical  School,  and  finally,  since  1916,  president  of 
the  University.  A  man  of  intensive  scientific  train- 
ing and  incisive  style  in  writing  and  speaking,  he  is 
moreover  possessed  of  rare  executive  capacity,  re- 
vealed in  the  organization  of  the  Medical  School 
and  in  general  administrative  affairs.  In  1898  he 
married  Marguerite  Blake  of  the  class  of  1897,  who 
presides  with  dignity  and  devotion  as  wife,  mother, 
and  hostess  in  the  stately  new  residence  now  pro- 
vided for  the  president.  During  the  war  Dr.  Wilbur 
rendered  signal  service  as  one  of  Hoover's  leading 
volunteer  associates  in  the  Food  Administration. 

But  upward  of  6000  earnest  men  and  women  re- 
ceived their  diplomas  at  my  hands,  going  forth  to 
varied  "usefulness  in  life,"  and  loyally  serving  their 
generation.  They  are  not  forgotten  —  neither  do  Not 
they  forget.1 

1  For  very  brief  mention  of  certain  early  graduates  see  Appendix  G  (page  707). 

C4I3  3 


The  Days  of  a  Man  £1891 

Dedicating  a  volume  of  "Stanford  Stories,"  Field 
and  Irwin  used  the  following  verses  extracted  from 
two  poems,  the  first  by  Irwin,  the  second  by  Field: 

To  the  newest  born  of  the  Sisters, 

At  the  end  of  the  race's  march, 

In  her  quaint,  old  Spanish  garment, 

Pillar  and  tile  and  arch; 

Awaiting  the  age  that  hallows, 

Her  face  to  the  coming  morn, 

Whose  scholars  still  walk  her  cloisters, 

Whose  martyrs  are  yet  unborn. 


We  scatter  down  the  four  wide  ways, 

Clasp  hands  and  part,  but  keep 

The  power  of  the  golden  days 

To  lull  our  care  asleep, 

And  dream,  while  our  new  years  we  fill 

With  sweetness  from  those  four, 

That  we  are  known  and  loved  there  still 

Though  we  come  back  no  more. 

The  Happily,  many  do  come  back,   and   some    in  a 

second  double  sense,  as  happens  with  every  "Alma  Mater." 
For  within  recent  years  the  University  has  had  the 
pleasure  of  welcoming  a  considerable  influx  of 
young  people  bearing  the  familiar  names  of  Stan- 
ford's first  generation  of  students.  Times  have 
necessarily  changed,  but  the  chief  regret  of  us 
Ancients  is  that  we  cannot  renew  our  youth  with 
these  children  of  a  later  day,  whose  parents  were 
and  remain  our  friends. 


During  the  first  year  of  the  university  a  number 
of  the  professors  had  rooms  in  Encina  Hall.  This 
naturally  brought  about  close  and  friendly  relations 

C  4H  3 


1891]  Life  at  Encina 

between  them  and  their  fellow  lodgers,  the  more  so 
as  the  faculty  was  then  made  up  of  men  under  forty 
years  of  age.  And  it  was  quite  often  said  that  the 
only  way  to  tell  an  upper  classman  from  a  professor 
was  that  the  students  were  the  older!  Once  when  " 
two  youths  met  on  a  tramp  in  the  hills,  one  became 
somewhat  expansive  in  regard  to  his  own  exploits. 
Finally,  surveying  his  companion,  he  inquired: 
"Frosh?"  "No,  Prof."  "Oh,  Lordy!"  said  the 
dismayed  freshman. 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  some  of  the  "boys,"  being  Students 
over  thirty,  were  older  than  several  of  the  pro-  °^aiur 
fessors.  Indeed,  the  average  freshman  was  twenty 
to  twenty-one  years  of  age  and  thus  more  mature 
than  is  the  case  in  Eastern  colleges.  For  this  there 
were  two  main  causes:  first,  the  limited  number  of 
high  schools  then  on  the  Pacific  slope;  and  second, 
the  fact  that  a  large  percentage  of  our  men  had  been 
obliged  to  interrupt  their  college  courses  to  earn 
money.  With  the  very  rapid  expansion  of  the 
educational  system  in  the  far  western  states  the 
one  cause  no  longer  operates.  To  a  large  extent 
the  other  still  holds. 

Students  at  the  University  of  California  humor- 
ously spoke  of  our  men  as  "kidlets"  or  as  "the 
boys  from  Dr.  Jordan's  school."    In  the  first  inter-  rbe first 
collegiate  clash,  a  football  game  in  November,  the  f°otbal1 

n\  •  11       »»  •  i  r  game 

kidlet  team  was  victorious  by  a  score  of  14  to 
10.  After  that,  athletics  being  the  main  test  of 
relative  vigor  in  the  minds  of  many,  Stanford 
University  was  received  on  more  or  less  equal 
fellowship  by  "Berkeley." 

On  the  I4th  of  May,  1892,  the  anniversary  of 
the  birthday  of  Leland  Stanford  Junior,  the  entire 


The  Days  of  a  Man 


university  went  to  Monterey  on  a  picnic,  an  inci- 
jent  which  strengthened  the  ties  already  binding 
"Pioneer"  teachers  and  students  to  one  another. 
In  1893  a  similar  outing  took  us  all  to  the  Felton 
"  Big  Trees."  Faculty  homes  were  meanwhile  freely 
opened  to  the  young  people,  joint  exploring  ex- 
cursions to  mountain  and  sea  were  common,  and 
the  "major  professor"  relation  —  including  the  pro- 
fessor's wife  —  was  no  mere  item  of  officialism, 
rather  a  source  of  enduring  personal  intimacy. 
These  special  conditions,  so  natural  in  early  days, 
continued  for  many  years,  and  formed  a  substantial 
element  in  the  development  of  "the  Stanford 
spirit." 

Senior-  One  unique  factor  of  that  and  a  later  period  as 
we"  was  ^  annua'  niatch  game  at  Commencement 
time  between  the  faculty  baseball  team  and  one 
made  up  from  the  senior  class.  This  custom  I  had 
introduced  with  success  at  the  University  of  Indiana. 
In  1909  a  falling  batting  average  led  me  to  give  up 
playing,  and  not  long  after  the  practice  was  dropped, 
the  spectacle  of  the  president  covering  first  base 
having  always  been  the  leading  attraction.  Yet  it 
is  only  fair  to  say  that  the  remarkable  attire  in 
which  the  successive  senior  players  appeared  also 
constituted  a  special  drawing  card.  The  Pioneers, 
for  example,  came  on  the  field  in  flannel  shirts  and 
overalls,  carrying  each  a  pick  and  shovel.  One  set 
garbed  themselves  in  ballet  costumes,  another  in 
Mother  Hubbards  —  these  last  presumably  to  their 
regret,  for  the  valiant  base  runners  struggled  hope- 
lessly at  times  against  the  clinging  skirts. 

Other  colorful    incidents   further  enlivened   such 


1891]  Student  Activities 

occasions.  In  the  course  of  the  '95  game,  I  happened 
to  hit  a  difficult  foul  fly  which  the  catcher,  Tracy 
Russell  (since  a  well-known  physician  of  San  Fran- 
cisco), captured  after  a  long  run,  thereby  assuring 
victory,  for  the  class.  Then  from  the  side  lines,  led 
by  Charlie  Field,  arose  the  chant: 

Will  Tracy  graduate? 
Only  the  Starrs  can  tell. 

At  the  games  the  camera  was,  of  course,  freely 
used,  and  in  early  editions  of  The  Quad,  or  Junior 
Annual,  many  amusing  incidents  are  pictured.     On  "Fanned 
one  occasion,  striking  too  hard  at  a  curved  ball,  to  ow/" 
the  delight  of  the  spectators  I  split  my  vest  down 
the  back.    A  framed  photograph  on  the  wall  of  the 
Faculty  Club  House  still  preserves  the  record  of 
that   mishap,    probably   unique   in   the   annals   of 
university  presidents. 

But  the  young  people  contributed  in  many  ways 
their  share  of  merriment,  though  frequently,  it 
must  be  confessed,  at  the  expense  of  their  elders. 
I  remember  distinctly  a  one-act  play  entitled  "A  "A 
Faculty  Meeting,"  in  which  various  members  of  the  Facuhy  n 
teaching  staff  were  cleverly  impersonated  and  the  Meeting 
outstanding  traits  of  each  pleasantly  hit  off.  After 
expansive  idealism  on  the  part  of  the  literary  fellows, 
and  some  droning  by  others,  an  instructor  came 
rushing  in  with  exciting  news  from  the  baseball 
field,  where  a  game  was  said  to  be  in  progress. 
Upon  this,  the  session  broke  up  incontinent,  all  the 
professors,  led  by  the  president,  making  for  the 
side  lines.  For  it  was  then  a  common  joke  among 
the  boys  to  say  that  ability  to  play  baseball  was  the 
first  requisite  in  securing  a  professorship  at  Stan- 

C4I73 


The  Days  of  a  Man  [1892 

ford.     As  a  matter  of  fact,  the  faculty  of  the  first 
few   years   contained   a   very   large   percentage   of 
college  athletes. 
The  At  another  time,  dramatic  action  being  interrupted 

by  a  loud  and  ^relevant  noise,  "That's  only  the 
president  falling  off  his  bicycle,"  remarked  one  of 
the  actors  reassuringly.  Like  most  of  the  faculty, 
I  was  learning  to  ride  the  wheel  on  the  old  asphalt 
pavement  of  the  Inner  Court,  and  being  a  "heavy- 
weight," was  fair  game.  (Somewhat  later,  when  the 
bicycle  age  was  fully  established,  half  a  thousand 
student  machines  stood  daily  about  the  walls  of 
the  Quad.)  In  another  skit,  Uncle  John,  our  local 
Ananias,  appeared  in  person,  explaining  to  a  casual 
tourist  that  the  small  banana  plants  in  the  Quad- 
rangle were  young  cocoa  trees,  which  grew  "fifty 
feet  high  in  summer,  and  gave  the  students  all  the 
coconuts  they  could  eat." 

Success/id  One  of  Encina's  most  successful  entertainments 
vaudeville  was  a  vau(jevijie  show.  Among  other  effective 
numbers,  the  performers  gave  a  perfectly  costumed 
ballet,  danced  by  several  long-legged,  husky  football 
heroes  fairly  bursting  from  their  bodices.  One,  in- 
deed, did  burst  as  the  stepping  got  brisker,  and  the 
"Queen,"  Tarn  McGrew,  a  picturesque  figure  from 
Honolulu,  was  more  compelling  than  ever  in  the 
new  role.  On  the  same  occasion  "Calliope  Cardi- 
nale"  —alias  "Charlie"  Field  —  a  tall  and  slender 
prkna  donna,  made  her  appearance.  Attired  in  an 
elegant  and  decidedly  decollete  gown  of  Stanford  red, 
long  cardinal-colored  silk  gloves  and  hose,  and 
voluminous  white  lacy  petticoats,  the  whole  topped 
by  an  elaborate  blond  coiffure,  the  singer  con- 
tributed several  florid  songs  in  a  fine  falsetto.  To- 


1892]  Stanford  Dramatics 

ward  the  close  of  their  rendition  he  (or  she)  dropped 
into  tenor  and  then  into  bass,  after  which  she 
(or  he)  withdrew  with  much  frou-frou  of  skirts  and 
flirting  of  lingerie,  to  the  great  admiration  of  the 
pit. 

But  our  Swedish  man  (who  had  dropped  in  at  the 
back  of  the  hall)  was  decidedly  shocked  by  the  free 
and  easy  manners  of  the  "ladies"  on  the  program. 
Yet  once,  when  a  Salvation  Army  captain  asked 
him  if  he  "would  like  to  work  for  Jesus,"  he  re- 
plied succinctly:  "No,  I  ban  working  for  Doctor 
Jordan." 

To  offset  the  antics  of  "Calliope"  and  the  robust  A  contest 
elegance  of  the  ballet,  the   boys  staged  a  contest  inu 
which    belied    Professor    Hiram    Corson's    assertion  * 
that  "football  is  not  a  lady-like  game."     The  two 
rival  teams,  each  member  in  conventional  evening 
dress,  and  with  ball  swathed  in  cardinal  satin  ribbon, 
first  me,t  with  elaborate  courtesy.     Every  play  was 
then  preceded  by  a  deferential  "May  I  not?"    "May 
I   presume?"  or  words  to  that  effect.     Even  the 
most  critical  stickler  for  etiquette  thus  found  nothing 
of  which  to  complain. 

Such  fooling  is,  of  course,  common  wherever  young 
fellows  congregate.  And  it  must  not  be  thought 
that  dramatic  talent  at  Stanford  runs  only  in  bur- 
lesque. The  entertainments  of  which  I  have  spoken 
were  followed  by  many  and  varied  efforts  along 
serious  lines.  Of  these,  the  medieval  "Knight  of 
the  Burning  Pestle"  (1902)  and  "Antigone"  in  The 
Greek  (1903)  stand  out  as  especially  elaborate  and 
scholarly  representations.  For  the  high  quality  of 
the  second,  not  excelled  in  any  similar  interpretation, 
credit  was  due  to  the  careful  training  of  Professors 

,  C  4i9  3 


The  Days  of  a  Man  1:1892 

Murray  and  Fairclough  and  to  the  fortunate  fitness 
of  Miss  Eunice  Cooksey  as  the  tragic  heroine  of 
Sophocles. 

Many  good  modern  plays  also  have  been  well 
produced  at  Stanford,  too  many  indeed  to  permit 
individual  notice.  Moreover,  my  mind  persistently 
turns  back  to  the  old,  idyllic  days,  never  before 
experienced  by  any  university  group,  and  never  to 
return.  The  atmosphere  of  that  time  was  so  de- 
lightfully expressed  by  Ellen  Coit  Elliott,  wife  of 
the  registrar,  that  I  cannot  refrain  from  quoting 
her  here.  In  an  article  relating  the  experiences  of 
the  "Cornell  Colony"  at  Stanford,  she  wrote: 

Die  Luft  Perhaps  it  is  the  spirit  of  the  West,  perhaps  it  is  the  vital 

der  breath  of  the  Pacific,  coming  in  to  us  over  the  mountains,  but 

Freibeit  whatever  it  may  be,  some  enchantment  has  blinded  us  to  the 
crudities,  the  drawbacks,  the  limitations  of  our  state.  The 
giants  looming  in  the  path  of  the  pioneer  appear  but  frivolous 
windmills  in  our  eyes.  Come  not  out  to  us,  O  doubting  Cor- 
nellians,  thinking  to  return  untouched  by  the  unreasonable 
enthusiasm.  Christmas  shall  bring  you,  and  the  months  of 
spring  shall  bring  you,  critical,  skeptical,  curious,  speering 
after  our  library,  questioning  about  our  funds,  and  you  shall 
return  —  if  you  return  at  all  —  chanting  as  fervently  and  ir- 
relevantly as  we,  "Die  Luft  der  Freibeit  weht" 


Among  the  students  generally  the  presence  of  the 
women  was  from  the  first  taken  as  a  matter  of 
course,  only  a  small  set  (commonly  reputed  to  be 
"fast")  regarding  them  as  in  any  sense  intruders. 
However,  as  time  went  on,  certain  elements  began 
to  voice  their  opposition  to  coeducation  at  Stan- 
ford. One  critical  group  consisted  partly  of  business 
C  420  3 


1892]  Coeducation  at  Stanford 

men  educated  at  Harvard  or  Yale,  for  it  is  some- 
times difficult  to  convince  elderly  graduates  of 
either  of  these  institutions  that  the  system  which 
prevailed  in  their  day  is  not  the  best  possible. 
Another  opposing  influence  came  from  certain  of 
our  Roman  Catholic  friends  who  hoped  to  establish 
a  branch  college  for  girls  at  Menlo  Park  under 
Stanford  auspices,  thus  forming  a  separate  "Annex" 
for  the  women.  This  idea  naturally  met  with  no 
favor  from  the  University  authorities,  and  Mrs. 
Stanford  herself  resolutely  refused  to  make  any 
change  whatever  in  her  husband's  recognized  pur- 
poses. 

The  women  he  had  heartily  welcomed  from  the 
beginning,  though  with  no  expectation  that  their 
number  would  approach  that  of  the  men;  the 
institution  was  to  deal  largely  with  the  applications 
of  science  and  with  advanced  research  in  the  various 
fields  of  knowledge,  for  he  had  in  mind  a  sort  of 
combination  of  Cornell  and  Johns  Hopkins.  After 
his  death,  certain  unforeseen  complications  threat- 
ened to  result  in  what  he  would  have  regarded  as 
an  excess  of  women  students.  Mrs.  Stanford,  Changes 
therefore,  as  acting  sole  trustee,  fe\t  obliged  to 
place  a  limit  on  their  number.  Her  action  aroused 
at  the  time  a  certain  amount  of  criticism,  though  it 
proved  distinctly  sound  as  a  policy  for  the  formative 
period,  and  that  for  a  twofold  reason. 

During  several  years  of  litigation  with  which  I 
shall  soon  deal,  we  found  ourselves  unable  to  pro- 
vide advanced  courses  in  some  special  lines  of  study. 
We  were  accordingly  compelled  to  advise  certain 
upper  classmen  to  go  elsewhere  to  complete  their 
work;  for  the  law  students  we  suggested  Harvard, 


women 


The  Days  of  a  Man  £1892 

for  medical  students,  Johns  Hopkins,  and  for  those 
in  Mechanical  and  Electrical  Engineering,  Cornell. 
Meanwhile  the  subjects  generally  chosen  by  women 
(involving  far  less  outlay  in  equipment)  were  well 
handled,  and  it  looked  as  if  the  men  might  be  out- 
numbered. 

Limitation  Such  a  contingency  naturally  alarmed  Mrs.  Stan- 
f°rc^  as  sne  sa^>  tne  institution  was  above  all  a 
memorial  to  a  boy,  and  neither  she  nor  her  husband 

and  men  WOuld  have  wished  it  to  appear  as  largely  a  school 
for  girls.  Accordingly,  on  May  31,  1899,  in  a  formal 
address  to  the  prospective  board,  she  stipulated 
that  "the  number  of  women  attending  the  University 
as  students  shall  at  no  time  exceed  five  hundred." 
In  this  matter  I  was  not  consulted  because,  so  she 
naively  explained  to  the  press,  I  "would  probably 
be  opposed,"  and  she  did  "not  wish  to  be  argued 
out  of  it." 

Many  years  later  (1916)  it  was  decided  by  my 
successor,  President  Branner,  and  the  board  of 
trustees  that  the  best  interests  of  Stanford  would  be 
served  by  limiting  also  the  number  of  young  men 
in  the  two  lower  classes.  For  the  authorities  were 
determined  npt  to  let  increasing  attendance  inter- 
fere with  good  work,  as  it  certainly  would  without 
a  corresponding  increase  in  income,  nowhere  to  be 
expected.  More  students  would  of  necessity  require 
more  teachers,  and  tuition  remaining  virtually  free, 
individual  salaries  would  then  have  to  be  lowered. 
The  only  alternative,  a  high  tuition  fee,  was  some- 
thing to  be  avoided,  as  it  is,  in  fact,  a  tax  on  edu- 
cation which  tends  to  discourage  self-supporting 
students,  many  of  whom  are  among  the  very  best. 
It  would  likewise  reduce  the  number  from  a  distance, 


Stanford*  s  War  Record 


and  thus  weaken  the  cosmopolitan  quality  of  which 
Stanford  was  justly  proud.1 

The  limitation  agreed  upon  in  1916  was  not  soon 
enforced,  for  with  America's  entrance  into  war, 
the  number  of  young  men  enrolled  in  the  university 
was  reduced  from  1500  to  800,  nearly  a  thousand 
undergraduates,  women  as  well  as  men,  having  left 
to  enter  one  or  another  form  of  war  work.  I  may 
here  add  that  2962  Stanford  men,  including,  of 
course,  a  large  percentage  of  alumni  and  several 
members  of  the  faculty,  enlisted  in  the  United 
States  Army;  also  that  seventy-five  students  and 
two  professors  (Dr.  Robert  E.douard  Pellissier  and 
Dr.  Shadworth  Beaseley)  lost  their  lives  in  the 
service.  Upward  of  four  hundred  others,  both  men 
and  women,  took  part  in  relief  work  under  the 
Red  Cross,  Friends'  Reconstruction  Commission, 
Y.  M.  C.  A.,  and  similar  agencies,  the  total  number 
in  war  service  being  recorded  as  3393. 

Entrance    requirements    for    the    first    year   had  Entrance 
necessarily  been   drawn   up   by  the   president   and  revujrf- 

^\  f     f  •  •  «       •  <•     t        o         i  ments 

registrar.  One  of  the  earliest  duties  of  the  faculty, 
therefore,  was  to  formulate  a  permanent  basis  for 
admission.  But  coming,  as  the  professors  did,  from 
many  different  institutions  with  varying  traditions, 
they  were  in  agreement  on  but  two  things:  first, 
that  standards  should  be  of  the  highest,  and,  second, 
that  emphasis  should  be  laid  on  quality  in  pre- 
paratory work  and  not  on  compliance  with  a  pre- 

1  In  1893  it  was  found  by  careful  calculation  that  our  young  people  came 
on  the  average  1080  miles,  the  institution's  "center  of  gravity"  lying  not  far 
from  Green  River,  Wyoming.  Recently,  the  pressure  of  the  high  cost  of  living 
has  forced  the  imposition  of  a  considerable  tuition  fee. 

1:423  3 


The  Days  of  a  Man  £1892 

scribed  list  of  studies.  The  general  consensus  of 
opinion  thus  favored  some  adaptation  of  the  Johns 
Hopkins  "group  system";  namely,  the  distribution 
of  preparatory  subjects  into  groups  —  Science,  Lit- 
erature, History,  Languages  —  from  each  of  which 
the  student  must  present  one  or  more  units.  There 
was,  however,  no  common  agreement  as  to  the 
make-up  of  the  several  combinations,  which  at  the 
best  are  largely  arbitrary.  Algebra,  for  instance,  — 
pure  logic  in  its  higher  reaches,  —  is  registered  under 
the  group  system  as  a  science  along  with  inductive 
(or  laboratory)  sciences  like  Chemistry  and  Zoology. 
Several  of  the  faculty,  moreover,  were  totally  opposed 
to  all  attempts  at  grouping,  holding  out  for  the 
acceptance  of  any  sixteen  high  school  units  of 
credit  —  that  is,  four  years'  work  —  however  com- 
posed, if  satisfactory  as  to  quality.  By  this  scheme 
the  adjustment  of  courses  would  be  left  to  the 
discretion  of  the  individual  secondary  schools. 
Large  No  agreement  having  been  reached,  the  matter 

ItrionL  was  finely  referred  back  to  the  president.  I  then 
prepara-  ruled  that  in  view  of  the  great  variety  and  wide 
geographical  range  of  the  institutions  from  which 
our  students  came,  the  sole  requirement  in  all  de- 
partments should  be  in  English  Composition,  while 
the  other  fifteen  units  might  be  chosen  from  a  list 
of  very  liberal  range.  In  other  words,  a  student 
need  not  necessarily  decide  in  preparatory  school 
as  to  what  lines  his  future  education  should  follow. 
Brief  courses  in  language  or  science  would  not, 
however,  be  accepted,  and  laboratory  work  would 
be  required  in  all  natural  and  physical  sciences. 

Faculty  meetings  are  as  a  rule  monotonous,  being 
highly  technical,  but  getting  acquainted  at  Stanford 

C  4H  3 


1892]          Liberalism  in  Education 

brought  out  an  occasional  humorous  incident.  One 
afternoon  Jenkins  expressed  quite  extreme  ideas  as 
to  "  Lernfreiheit,"  insisting  on  the  elimination  of 
certain  methods  as  cumbersome  traditions  which 
interfere  with  mental  training,  the  real  work  of  a 
university.  To  this  point  of  view  Anderson  took  Radical 
exception  and  said  that  though  he  had  previously  andc™- 
thought  himself  a  radical  in  education,  he  now 
seemed  to  be  "at  the  tail  end  of  the  conservatives." 
I  then  reminded  Jenkins  of  the  first  time  either 
Anderson  or  I  ever  met  him.  This  was  in  1878  at  a 
meeting  of  the  Indiana  State  Teachers'  Association, 
where  Anderson  read  a  paper  on  the  cultural  value 
of  German  literature,  and  especially  of  "Faust." 
Jenkins,  however,  maintained  vigorously  in  rebuttal 
that  modern  literature  had  no  place  in  college  ;  such 
time  as  a  student  could  devote  to  letters  and  phi- 
losophy should  be  spent  on  Greek  and  Latin;  "a 
study  of  Plato  was  more  fertile  than  that  of  Goethe." 
"Yes,"  characteristically  countered  Jenkins,  "I 
once  wore  short  pants."  And  some  years  later  his 
most  notable  educational  utterance,  a  Commence- 
ment address  at  Stanford,  had  for  its  theme  "The 
Passing  of  Plato." 

During  the  first  few  years  I  was  repeatedly  asked 
what  brought  Eastern  students  to  Stanford.  In 
1893,  therefore,  I  addressed  a  circular  to  each  one 
of  them,  inquiring  as  to  his  motives  in  coming. 

"The  charm  of  California  itself"  was  most  fre- 
quently given  as  a  reason.  Then  came  (in  order) 
"its  excellence  of  climate,"  "its  appeal  to  the  spirit 
of  adventure,"  "Stanford's  freedom  in  study  and 
the  flexibility  of  its  educational  adjustments,"  "mod- 

C4253 


Came 


Educa- 
tional 
ideals 


The  Days  of  a  Man  £1892 

erate  charges  along  with  opportunities  for  self- 
support,"  "previous  personal  acquaintance  with 
members  of  the  faculty,"  and  "a  general  feeling 
that  the  new  institution  was  on  the  right  track." 

The  last  idea  was  characteristically  expressed  by 
two  of  the  upper  classmen.  The  one  said : 

I  chose  Stanford  as  the  place  for  my  final  year  as  an  under- 
graduate because  of  its  progressive  educational  ideals  and  a 
strong  belief  in  the  spirit  and  methods  of  its  work,  a  belief 
based  on  four  years  of  study  and  observation  in  two  Eastern 
universities. 

Another  wrote : 

I  came  to  Stanford  because  I  had  noted  with  keen  interest 
the  educational  ideals  on  which  it  was  founded,  and  believed 
that  such  ideals  must  lead  to  a  culture  broader  than  that  of 
any  creed  or  party  more  reverent.  I  came  also  because  at 
Stanford  it  is  possible  to  be  always  in  close  contact  with  a 
beautiful  natural  world.  One  is  much  out  of  doors,  which 
serves  to  keep  things  in  good  proportion.  I  came  also  because 
I  wished  to  do  special  work  in  history,  and  had  learned  that 
Dr.  Howard  was  an  able  teacher.  It  has  been  a  good  and 
satisfactory  year. 

Still  another  expressed  in  specific  terms  the  general 
point  of  view: 

Charm  of  Through  the  East,  to  a  great  many  people,  California  is  a 
California  SynOnym  for  gold  and  flowers  and  perpetual  sunshine.  One 
reason  I  came  was  because  it  was  to  California,  and  I  had 
long  dreamed  of  that  place.  Again,  I  expected  to  go  East  to 
study  medicine,  and  it  was  wise,  it  seemed  to  me,  to  spend  the 
first  few  years  of  study  in  the  West.  Had  I  known  of  our  su- 
perior advantages  in  the  physiological  and  histological  de- 
partments, that  of  itself  would  have  been  sufficient  reason  for 
attending  Stanford. 

The  problem  of  enabling  students  to  pay  their 
way  by  work  came  up  at  Stanford  much  as  it  had 

C  426  3 


1892]         Self-Support  at  Stanford 

at  Cornell  in  my  own  day.  Here,  however,  there 
was  no  promise  to  provide  employment  for  unskilled 
labor  such  as  was  at  first  made  by  Ezra  Cornell. 
But  opportunities  for  earning  money  were  frequent 
from  the  first  —  gardening,  chores,  cooking,  waiting 
on  table,  general  house  service,  carpentry,  and 
(more  recently)  the  care  and  driving  of  automobiles. 

In  the  University  itself,  students  —  especially  ad-  students 
vanced  ones  —  have  been  employed  on  an  increasing  as  hflPfrs 
scale  as  departmental  assistants,  cataloguers,  ste- 
nographers, typists,  laboratory  helpers,  and  the  like, 
an  adjustment  which  is  of  great  value  not  alone  to 
the  workers,  but  also  to  the  professors,  whose  time 
it  saves  for  more  important  things.  There  has  also 
been  a  certain  amount  of  opportunity  in  private 
tutoring,  though  this  has  never  developed  into  a 
system  for  lifting  the  "tender  rich"  over  exami- 
nations, a  gross  abuse  in  some  Eastern  institutions. 

Various  college  fraternities  and  sororities  early  Fraternity 
established  themselves  at  Stanford  with  my  ap- 
proval.  Ultimately  upward  of  forty  chapter  houses 
(subject  to  the  general  oversight  applied  to  all 
students)  were  erected  on  the  Campus.  These  have 
added  much  to  the  appearance  of  the  residence 
section  and  have  constituted  an  important  factor  in 
its  social  life,  though  not  without  some  accompany- 
ing problems  of  a  serious  nature.  But  as  I  have 
already  discussed  the  general  fraternity  question  at 
some  length,1  I  here  refrain  from  further  allusion 
to  it. 

1  See  Chapter  in,  page  60. 


CHAPTER  EIGHTEEN 


THE  first  Commencement  in  the  history  of  Stan- 
ford University  took  place  June  15,  1892.  On  that 
occasion  we  conferred  the  degree  of  Bachelor  of 
Arts  on  twenty-nine  graduates,  and  that  of  Master 
of  Arts  on  nine  more  —  a  relatively  small  group, 
which,  however,  contained  a  high  percentage  of 
scholarly  and  capable  men  and  women. 

With  the  advent  of  vacation,  Mrs.  Jordan  and  I 
made  a  hasty  trip  to  the  Yosemite,  entering  the 
valley  from  the  southwest  by  way  of  Wawona, 
where  we  passed  the  night  and  whence  we  visited 
the  Mariposa  Big  Trees,  the  most  familiar  though 
not  the  largest  of  the  several  principal  groups  of  the 
majestic  Sequoia  washingtonia.1  The  others  are 
those  of  Calaveras,  Tuolumne,  and  Tulare.  One 
equally  fine  grove,  that  of  the  Converse  Basin  in 
Tulare  County,  fell  before  the  lumbermen. 

These  forests  constitute  the  oldest  living  plant 
representatives  of  an  earlier  geologic  era.  Originally 
the  genus  had  a  wide  distribution  in  the  north 
temperate  zone,  several  fossil  species  having  been 
found  in  Tertiary  deposits  from  Greece  northward 
through  Europe  and  Asia,  as  well  as  in  America, 
where  fossil  remains  exist  in  the  Petrified  Forest  of 
Arizona.  But  only  in  California  has  the  Sequoia 
maintained  itself  through  the  vicissitudes  of  later 
periods.  According  to  John  Muir,  special  conditions 
which  prevailed  at  the  beginning  of  the  last  glacial 

1  See  footnote,  Chapter  xvi,  page  393. 


1892]       The  Big  Trees  of  the  Sierra 

recession  left  certain  sections  of  the  lower  Sierran 
slopes  (from  4700  to  7000  feet  in  altitude)  par- 
ticularly favorable  for  the  invasion  of  this  genus 
from  regions  farther  south. 

Planted  in  parks  in  England  as  well  as  in  America, 
the  young  trees  thrive  perfectly.  Yet  the  vigorous 
infants  only  a  hundred  or  so  years  old  at  Kew  and 
Warwick  hardly  reveal  their  identity  with  our 
stately  and  beautiful  giants  which  have  looked  down 
on  fifty  centuries  of  unshifting  mountain  solitude, 
for  the  full-grown  tree  is  almost  as  unique  in  beauty 
as  in  botanical  relationship.1 

Borne  high  aloft  on  the  huge  satiny,  cinnamon-  Sequoia 
hued  bole,  the  delicate  sprays  of  brilliant  green 
foliage  stand  out  with  an  effect  indescribably  lovely, 
especially  in  the  sunlight.  The  largest  example  of 
this  superb  species  (Calaveras  Grove)  is  45  feet  in 
diameter  6  feet  above  the  base,  and  325  feet  high. 
Only  the  sister  form,  the  slender  Sempervirens  of  the 
Coast  Range,  in  any  sense  rivals  it  in  majestic 
beauty.  But  the  biggest  redwood  is  less  than  20 
feet  in  diameter  and  barely  275  feet  in  height ! 

The  Big  Trees  tower  Titan-like  above  the  mag-  other  giant, 
nificent  pine  forests  which  clothe  the  flanks  of  the  conifgrs 
Sierra  Nevada.    Here  flourishes  the  Sugar  Pine  — 
Pinus  lambertiana  —  the   largest  of  its  tribe,  with 
enormous  cones,  dark  green  foliage,  and  straight, 
symmetrical  mast,  sometimes  10  feet  through;   "be- 
yond doubt  the  noblest  of  all  vegetables,"  declared 
its  discoverer,   David   Douglas,   the  botanist.     At 

1  On  the  Stanford  Campus  are  several  promising  little  Sequoias.  The  first 
was  planted  at  Mr.  Stanford's  request  in  March,  1891,  by  ex-President  Harri- 
son. Later  that  good  precedent  was  followed  when  other  distinguished  visitors 
came,  among  them  John  Hay  and  Theodore  Roosevelt.  In  1904,  in  accordance 
with  Mrs.  Stanford's  wish,  I  myself  planted  a  sapling  near  Encina  Hall. 

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The  Days  of  a  Man  £1892 

that  time,  however,  Douglas  had  certainly  not  seen 
the  Sequoia,  nor  of  course  the  Giant  Eucalyptus  of 
.the  Blacks'  Spur  in  the  Break  o'  Day  Range  in 
southeastern  Australia. 

Far  more  abundant  and  scarcely  less  noble  is  the 
Yellow  Pine  —  Pinus  ponderosa.  This  lacks  the 
stately  symmetry  of  its  neighbor,  but  its  opulent 
spread,  very  long  needles,  and  rosy-tinted,  yellowish- 
brown  bark  bring  it  into  easy  rivalry. 

Scattered  through  the  forests  occur  other  great 
trees,  in  particular  the  Incense  Cedar  —  Libocedrus 
decurrens  —  and  two  or  three  species  each  of  fir  — 
Abies  —  and  of  spruce  —  Pseudotsuga.  Northward 
the  Douglas  Spruce,  the  most  abundant  of  these, 
gradually  replaces  pine  and  is  the  chief  constituent 
of  the  great  woods  of  Oregon  and  Washington. 

Spruce  and  fir  look  about  alike  to  the  uninitiated; 
*?r  long  ago,  therefore,  I  framed  a  discriminating  bit  of 
spruce  verse : 

F  is  for  fir, 

It  looks  toward  the  firmament  — 

which,  being  interpreted,  means  that  in  all  species 
of  fir  the  cones  point  up,  while  in  the  spruces  they 
all  droop.  Furthermore,  on  each  spray  of  fir  the 
leaf  tips  curve  upward,  so  that  looking  down  from 
above  every  leaf  can  be  seen.  Spruce  leaves,  on  the 
contrary,  surround  the  small  branches,  and  the 
upper  ones  hide  the  lower. 

Strolling  out  after  dinner  at  Wawona,  1  encoun- 
tered a  typical  mountain  prevaricator  who  related 
how  once  when  a  Sequoia  crashed  to  the  ground,  "the 
echoes  were  heard  in  the  mountains  for  six  weeks"; 

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REDWOODS  NEAR  LA  HONDA 


PRUNE  TREES,  SANTA  CLARA  VALLEY 


18923  The  Yosemite 


and  in  "a  free  fight"  a  friend  of  his  showed  himself  cheerful 
so  competent  that  "for  three  weeks  afterward  men  ta}e*i 

T     .          i  i     »>        A          the  bierra 

were  seen  getting  up  around  in  the  woods.  An- 
other yarn  figured  the  mountain  sheep  or  Big  Horn, 
the  rams  of  which  are  currently  reputed  to  be  able 
to  plunge  down  a  precipice,  strike  on  their  enormous 
prongs,  and  turn  a  somersault  in  safety.  According 
to  my  informant  a  Big  Horn  once  leaped  off  the 
edge  of  a  chasm  in  the  usual  fashion  of  his  kind. 
But  halfway  down,  spying  below  a  camp  of  hunters 
by  a  spring,  he  immediately  turned  over  in  midair, 
and  was  carried  back  to  the  top  by  momentum! 

In  this  connection  I  am  reminded  of  a  fact  I  have 
frequently  observed,  which  is  that  some  Easterners 
readily  believe  anything  of  California  except  what 
is  true. 

The  road  out  of  Wawona  winds  for  miles  down 
through  superb  forests  which  at  Inspiration  Point 
give  way  to  reveal  the  stupendous  panorama  of  the 
Yosemite,  the  delight  of  every  geologist  since  John 
Muir  first  made  known  its  grandeur.  In  general  it 
has  been  compared,  not  inappropriately,  to  the 
valley  of  Lauterbrunnen  in  the  Bernese  Oberland. 
But  its  greatest  cliffs  —  El  Capitan  and  the  Half 
Dome  —  are  higher  than  Miirren;  its  falls  —  Yo- 
semite, Nevada,  Vernal,  Bridal  Veil,  and  Illilouette 
—  mostly  far  exceed  in  volume,  and  some  of  them 
in  height,  the  misty  Staubbach  and  the  turbid 
Schmadribach  charged  with  glacial  mud.  More- 
over, the  view  from  Glacier  Point  far  excels  that 
from  Miirren  or  from  any  other  spot  in  Switzerland 
in  its  long-range  disclosure  of  200  square  miles  of 
ice-worn  granite,  extending  from  Cathedral  Peak 

3 


The  Days  of  a  Man  £1892 

to  Mount  Starr  King,  though  the  mountains  facing 
Miirren  —  Eiger,  Monch,  Schneehorn,  Jungfrau, 
Silberhorn,  Gletscherhorn,  and  Ebnefluh  —  are  in- 
comparably more  beautiful  than  Lyell  and  its 
fellows,  because  much  nearer  and  covered  with 
eternal  snow.  As  for  trees,  the  second  growth  of 
larch  and  pine  in  the  Bernese  Oberland,  dainty  as 
it  is,  bears  no  comparison  with  the  Mariposa  forests. 
The  preceding  winter  having  been  long  and 
heavy,  very  few  of  the  upper  trails  were  open  at 
the  time  of  our  visit.  Our  chief  excursion,  there- 
fore, was  up  the  Merced  River  to  Vernal  and  Nevada 
Falls,  then  along  the  mountain  rim  to  Glacier  Point. 
Reaching  the  small  Illilouette,  swollen  with  melted 
snow,  we  found  the  foot-log  ten  inches  or  more 
under  water.  But  rather  than  turn  back,  Mrs. 
Jordan  insisted  on  crossing,  a  feat  which  so  impressed 
the  Park  Commission,  then  in  session,  that  it  at 
once  arranged  for  a  bridge. 
Nevada  After  we  passed  the  superb  Nevada  Fall,  a  German 
tour^st  wh°  happened  along  persisted  in  comparing 
it  with  a  cataract  of  his  native  Bavaria.  "  But  you 
should  see  the  Rheinfall  at  Schaffhausen,"  said  he. 
The  Rheinfall,  however,  though  its  stream  carries 
four  times  as  much  water  as  the  Merced,  is  merely 
a  break  of  some  sixty  feet,  only  one  twelfth  as  high 
as  Nevada  Fall.  Moreover,  nothing  of  the  kind  is 
finer  than  the  glorious  outward  leap  of  the  latter  as 
viewed  from  the  rocky  ascending  trail  by  its  side;  to 
my  mind,  only  one  other  mountain  cascade  in  Amer- 
ica, the  Great  Fall  of  the  Yellowstone,  surpasses  it 
in  beauty.  Yet  I  must  not  forget  the  superb  double 
plunge  of  2500  feet  of  Yosemite  Fall  on  the  north 
side  of  the  valley,  a  veritable  drop  from  the  clouds. 


1892]  On  the  Road 


The  strenuous  duties  of  the  academic  year, 
supplemented  by  continuous  scientific  work  which 
I  was  not  willing  to  abandon,  rendered  it  continu- 
ously imperative  that  I  should,  whenever  possible, 
find  new  vigor  in  the  open.  I  have  always  been 
fond  of  riding  and  driving.  For  two  or  three  years 
I  used  to  ride  about  the  country  on  a  wiry,  black 
bronco.  Mr.  Stanford  rightly  thought  I  ought  to 
have  a  better  mount,  and  he  pointed  out  "Flood-  Fioodmore 
more,"  a  fine  bay  thoroughbred  which  he  said 
should  be  mine  when  the  foreman  had  given  it  a 
little  more  training.  But  after  his  death  —  which 
soon  followed  —  the  University  was  in  such  straits 
for  money  that  I  had  not  the  heart  to  claim  the 
beast,  and  he  was  sold  with  the  rest,  ultimately 
making  a  fine  record  as  a  racer. 

Until  the  automobile  owned  our  roads,  I  always 
kept  a  fine  carriage  span,  which  I  drove  almost 
daily  about  the  great  Campus.  Three  or  four  of 
my  horses  came  from  the  Stock  Farm,  where  those 
not  likely  to  succeed  on  the  race  course  were  sold 
to  the  public.  But  even  the  less  speedy  animals 
were  beautiful  creatures  and  fine  roadsters  —  sleek, 
sensitive,  and  intelligent. 

For  our  trips  to  the  many  charming  places  within  joyw 
less  easy  reach,  I  often  hired  plebeian  horses  from  excurswns 
the  livery  stables,   and   thus  we   covered  in  time 
many  hundreds  of  miles  in  California.     Our  Yo- 
semite  outing  was  the  first  of  a  series  of  joyous 
excursions  which  brought  us  close  to  the  heart  of 
the   land,   and   extended   through   the   length   and 

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breadth  of  the  whole  great  state.  Something  of 
California's  lure  I  had  myself  sensed  while  here  in 
1880.  But  it  was  not  until  it  became  our  home  that 
we  could  be  truly  called  "  Californiacs,"  to  use  the 
apt  word  coined  by  Inez  Haynes  Irwin.  Having 
fallen  under  the  spell,  I  tried  to  give  others  some 
notion,  however  incomplete,  of  the  ineffable  charm 
which  bound  and  still  binds  us  both.  My  essay 
entitled  "California  and  the  Californians  "  appeared 
originally  in  The  Atlantic  Monthly,1  and  has  been 
thrice  reprinted  as  a  booklet.  Across  the  int.erven- 
ing  years,  it  seems  to  embody  in  a  -degree  our  "first 
fine,  careless  rapture,"  and  from  it,  therefore,  I  now 
venture  to  quote. 

She  first  The  Californian  loves  his  state  because  his  state  first  loved 

loved  us       him.     He  returns  her  love  with  a  fierce  affection  that  to  men 
who  do  not  know  California  is  always  a  surprise.   ... 

To  know  the  glory  of  California  scenery,  one  must  live 
close  to  it  through  the  changing  years.  From  Siskiydu  to  San 
Diego,  from  Shasta  to  Santa  Catalina,  from  Mendocino  to 
Mariposa,  from  Tahoe  to  the  Farallones  —  lake,  crag,  or 
chasm,  forest,  mountain,  valley,  or  island,  river,  bay,  or  jutting 
headland  —  every  scene  bears  the  stamp  of  its  own  peculiar 
beauty,  a  singular  blending  of  richness,  wildness,  and  warmth. 
Coastwise  everywhere  sea  and  mountains  meet,  and  the  surf 
of  the  cold  Japanese  Current  breaks  in  turbulent  beauty 
against  tall  rincones  and  jagged  reefs  of  rock.  Slumbering 
amid  the  heights  of  the  Coast  Range  lie  golden  valleys  dotted 
with  wide-limbed  oaks,  or  smothered  under  over-weighted 
fruit  trees.  Here,  too,  crumble  to  ruins  the  old  Franciscan 
missions,  each  in  its  own  fair  valley  —  passing  monuments  of 
California's  first  page  of  written  history. 

Inland  rises  the  great  Sierra  with  spreading  ridge  and  foot- 
hill, like  some  huge  sprawling  centipede  —  its  granite  back 
unbroken  for  a  thousand  miles.  Frost-torn  peaks  of  every 

1  November,  1898. 

C  434  3 


1892]  A  California  Rhapsody 

height  and  bearing  pierce  the  blue  wastes  above,  their  slopes 
dark  with  forests  of  giant  trees.  .  .  .  Dropped  here  and 
there  gleam  turquoise  lakes  which  mark  the  craters  of  dead 
volcanoes,  or  swell  the  polished  basins  where  vanished  glaciers 
did  their  last  work.  Through  mountain  meadows  run  swift 
brooks  o'erpeopled  with  trout,  while  from  the  crags  leap  full- 
throated  streams,  blown  half  away  in  mist  before  they  touch 
the  valley  floor.  Far  down  the  fragrant  canyons  sing  the 
green  and  troubled  rivers,  twisting  lower  and  lower  to  the  com- 
mon plain.  Even  the  hopeless  stretches  of  alkali  and  sand, 
sinks  or  graves  of  dying  streams,  are  redeemed  by  the  De- 
lectable Mountains  that  shut  them  in.  And  everywhere  the 
landscape  swims  in  crystalline  ether,  while  over  all  broods 
the  warm  California  sun. 

As  there  is  from  end  to  end  of  the  state  scarcely  one  com-  Two 
monplace  mile,  so  from  one  end  of  the  year  to  the  other  dawns  seas°ns  ™ 
scarcely  a  colorless  day.     Two  seasons  only  has  California; 
but  two  are  enough,  if  each  in  its  way  be  perfect.    Certain  out- 
side  critics   have   called   the   climate   "monotonous."     Good 
health  is  equally  so.     In  terms  of  Eastern   experience,  our 
seasons  may  well  be  defined  as  "late  in  the  spring  and  early  in 
the  fall"  — 

Half  a  year  of  clouds  and  flowers, 

Half  a  year  of  dust  and  sky, 

according  to  Bret  Harte.  But  with  dust1  follows  an  unbroken 
succession  of  days  of  sunshine  and  dry,  invigorating  air  loaded 
with  the  fragrance  of  the  resinous  tarweed,  while  everywhere 
the  land  riots  in  a  boundless  overflow  of  vine*  and  orchard. 
Each  season  thus  brings  in  turn  its  fill  of  satisfaction.  If  one 
must  indicate  a  choice,  let  it  perhaps  be  June,  for  then  the  air 
is  softest,  and  a  touch  of  summer's  gold  o'erlies  the  green  of 
winter.  But  October,  when  the  first  swift  rains  "dash  the  whole 
long  slope  with  color,"  and  leave  the  clean-washed  atmosphere 
so  absolutely  transparent  that  even  distance  is  no  longer  blue, 
has  a  charm  scarcely  less  alluring. 

As  for  man,  he  is  never  the  climate's  slave,  never  beleaguered 
by  powers  of  the  air;  winter  and  summer  alike  call  him  out  of 

1  Largely  eliminated  since  the  automobile  came  into  common  use  and  led 
to  the  building  of  thousands  of  miles  of  roads  of  asphalt  and  concrete. 

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The  Days  of  a  Man  £1892 

doors.  The  Eastern  habit  of  roasting  one's  self  all  winter 
long  is  unknown  here,  and  the  old  Californian  seldom  built  a 
fire  for  the  sake  of  warmth.  If  cold,  he  went  out  of  doors. 
The  house  was  a  place  for  storing  food  and  keeping  one's  be- 
longings from  the  wet;  to  hide  in  it  from  the  weather  was  to 
abuse  its  normal  function. 

The  The  goal  of  many  of  our  less  arduous  excursions 

Missions  was  one  or  another  of  the  old  Franciscan  Missions. 
These  form  a  chain  strung  coastwise  from  San 
Diego  to  Sonoma,  a  distance  of  nearly  700  miles, 
each  link  about  40  miles  long  —  that  is,  a  day's 
journey  on  horseback.  And  the  Fathers  had  a 
keen  eye  for  good  land  with  picturesque  outlooks; 
so  wherever  you  find  a  rich,  warm  valley  filled  in 
summer  with  soft,  blue  haze,  hemmed  in  by  wooded 
hills  and  opening  westward  to  the  sea,  some  old 
Mission  stands  not  far  away. 

San  Diego  The  oldest  of  the  series,  San  Diego  de  Alcala, 
founded  by  Padre  Junipero  Serra  in  1777,  lies  in  a 
sheltered  valley  of  the  San  Dieguito  River,  over  be- 
hind the  mesa  ("table")  east  of  the  town.  The 
original  structure,  however,  was  burned  by  the  un- 
redeemed, the  Indians  of  that  region  being  peculiarly 
refractory.  The  present  ancient  building  is  there- 
fore not  the  oldest  in  the  state,  as  the  Presidio 
Chapel  at  Monterey  is  of  earlier  date. 

san  Second  in  the  chain,  on  an  open  plain  by  the  side 

Luis  Rey  of  a  clear  stream,  dry  of  course  in  summer,  stands 
San  Luis  Rey  de  Francia,  architecturally  one  of  the 
most  beautiful  and  picturesque  of  them  all.  Being 
there  through  the  middle  of  the  day,  we  presented 
ourselves  for  luncheon  at  the  adjacent  old  Spanish 
Rancho  Guajome,  with  a  hacienda  consisting  of 
several  small  stone  cottages  around  a  square  patio  — 
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1892]     The  Old  Franciscan  Missions 

an  arrangement,  I  may  add,  not  unlike  that  from 
which  Jefferson  drew  the  architectural  motive  of  the 
University  of  Virginia.  In  the  main  building, 
Senora  Coutts,  widow  of  Lieutenant  Cave  J.  Coutts, 
a  classmate  and  friend  of  Grant,  received  us  with 
old-time  hospitality  and  dignity.  In  her  youth  a 
noted  beauty,  the  Senorita  Ysidora  Bandini,  she 
still  retained  a  singular  charm  and  vivacity,  and 
her  sprightly  reminiscences  of  other  times  and  other 
manners  kept  us  keenly  interested. 

The  next  in  order,  San  Juan  Capistrano,  with  its  Sanjuan 
splendid  array  of  arcaded  cloisters  around  a  central  CaPisirano 
quadrangular  patio,  furnished  —  as  I  have  already 
explained —  the  art  idea  of  Stanford,  but  was  long 
since  wrecked  by  a  fierce  temblor  and  remains  a 
ruin,  its  portal  guarded  by  the  largest  pepper  tree 
in  California.  North  of  Capistrano  are  three  minor 
foundations:  San  Gabriel  Arcangel,  unpretending, 
but  still  intact;  San  Fernando  Rey  de  Espafia, 
lately  restored;  and  San  Buenaventura,  never  large, 
and  now  reduced  to  a  parish  church. 

Much  bigger  and  rising  from  a  splendid  garden  Santa 
which  overlooks  the  sea  and  offshore  islands,  stands  Barbara 
the  Mission  of  Santa  Barbara.  Built  of  stone,  this 
edifice  has  remained  intact  and  continuously  occu- 
pied by  Franciscan  brothers.  Its  nearest  neighbors 
to  the  north  beyond  the  Sierra  Santa  Ynez,  the 
high  backbone  of  Santa  Barbara  County,  are  the 
twin  establishments  of  La  Punsima  Concepcion  and 
Santa  Ynez  Virgen  y  Martir,  small  but  still  in  use. 
Next  "comes  San  Luis  Obispo  de  Tolosa,  at  the  foot 
of  a  row  of  four  huge,  separate,  conical  hills,  unique 
in  California  scenery. 

San  Miguel  Arcangel  in  the  valley  of  the  Salinas 

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San 

Antonio 


San  Juan 
Bautista 
and  Santa 
Clara 


Dolores 


River  retains  a  series  of  cloisters  behind  a  long 
arcade.  Nuestra  Senora  de  la  Soledad  on  the  rich 
pastures  farther  north,  being  made  of  adobe  — 
sun-dried  brick  —  has  vanished  utterly.  San  An- 
tonio de  Padua  in  the  foothills  of  the  Sierra  Santa 
Lucia,  one  of  the  most  picturesque  of  all,  was  rapidly 
falling  to  ruin  up  to  the  time  of  its  recent  rescue  by 
the  Landmarks  Club.  Its  last  padre,  a  touching 
figure,  supported  himself  by  the  sale  of  geese,  and 
of  red  tiles  from  the  Mission  roof. 

Of  San  Carlos  Borromeo,  near  Monterey,  I  have 
already  written  at  some  length.  At  Santa  Cruz 
only  one  old  wall  still  stands.  San  Juan  Bautista, 
though  lying  close  to  California's  great  earthquake 
rift  and  several  times  badly  shaken,  is  still  in  service. 
After  the  temblor  of  1906,  I  gave  a  lecture  in  its  old 
garden  on  the  history  of  the  Missions,  for  the  benefit 
of  the  damaged  church.  The  scanty  remains  of 
Santa  Clara  Virgen  y  Maftir  are  now  incorporated 
with  the  buildings  of  the  University  of  Santa  Clara. 
At  the  Mission  San  Jose,  some  miles  from  the  city 
inheriting  the  name,  little  is  left.  San  Francisco  de 
Assis  de  los  Dolores  endures  as  a  modest  chapel  still 
in  operation  in 

That  wondrous  city,  now  apostate  to  the  creed, 

which  still  bears  the  name  of  the  beloved  saint. 
The  two  youngest  and  most  remote  foundations, 
San  Rafael  Arcangel  and  San  Francisco  Solano,  were 
ill  supported  and  soon  abandoned;  of  them  nothing 
now  stands. 

The  downfall  of  the  Missions  followed  inevitably 
on  the  seizure  by  Santa  Ana  (1840)  of  the  famous 
"Pious  Fund"  gathered  in  Spain  in  the  eighteenth 


1892]        t   Extending  the  Faculty 

century  for  their  maintenance.  In  1902  the  fifty  The  Pious 
years'  dispute  concerning  the  Fund  was  settled  by  Fund 
the  Hague  Tribunal,  the  decision  being  in  favor  of 
the  Catholic  Church  of  America  as  guardian  of  the 
Missions;  and  the  sum  in  question,  principal  and 
interest,  was  promptly  repaid  by  the  Mexican 
Government.  It  is  interesting  to  note  that  this 
particular  case  was  deliberately  chosen  as  the  first 
to  be  considered  at  The  Hague  because  it  was 
thought  unlikely  to  arouse  undue  partisan  or  national 
feeling.  Our  friend  and  neighbor,  Attorney  John  T. 
Doyle  of  Menlo  Park,  a  broad-minded  and  well- 
informed  authority  on  Spanish-American  affairs, 
prepared  the  elaborate  legal  basis  for  the  Church 
contention. 

3 

With  the  reopening  of  the  University  for  its 
second  year,  the  faculty  ranks  were  strengthened  by 
several  additional  teachers. 


Dr.  Ewald  Fluegel  was  a  fine  example  of  the  best  type  of  A  Chaucer 
thorough  and  patient  German  scholar.  While  docent  at  Leipzig,  scholar 
he  had  been  chosen  editor  of  the  proposed  great  Chaucer  Dic- 
tionary by  the  British  Chaucer  Society  of  Oxford.  To  this 
work  Dr.  Fluegel  gave  his  available  time  and  energy  up  to 
the  date  of  his  death  in  1914  —  a  calamity  hastened  by  his 
distress  at  the  outbreak  of  war.  He  had  then  completed  only 
about  half  of  the  huge  task,  though  the  rest  was  already  elabo- 
rately blocked  out.  For  his  ideal  had  been  to  present  the 
language  of  Chaucer's  time  with  absolute  completeness  and 
perfection  of  scholarship.1  An  excellent  teacher  as  well  as 
investigator,  always  considerate  and  optimistic,  Dr.  Fluegel 
was  much  beloved  by  his  students  and  colleagues. 

1  Under  his  successor,  Dr.  John  S.  P.  Tatlock,  the  work  has  been  continued, 
with  hope  of  its  ultimate  publication  by  the  Carnegie  Institution  which  had 
granted  special  aid  to  Dr.  Fluegel. 

C4393 


The  Days  of  a  Man     ,         £1892 

Other  Dudley  resigned   an   assistant  professorship   at  Cornell  to 

strong  men  accept  the  chair  of  Systematic  Botany  at  Stanford.  In  Cali- 
fornia he  devoted  himself  especially  to  the  trees,  leading  his 
students  on  long  and  enthusiastic  explorations  of  the  Coast 
Ranges  and  the  high  Sierra.  No  one  else  has  studied  our  great 
conifers  so  thoroughly  or  so  lovingly.  In  recognition  of  his 
work  to  Systematic  Botany,  an  interesting  genus  of  the  stone- 
crop  group,  found  on  the  bluffs  of  the  California  coast,  received 
the  name  of  Dudley  a.  In  1911  he  left  for  Persia  on  a  botanical 
tour,  but  a  breakdown  in  health  when  nearing  Damascus 
forced  him  to  return  to  California,  where  he  died  in  1913, 
leaving  behind  him  the  most  fragrant  of  memories. 

Dr.  Augustus  T.  Murray,  a  graduate  of  Johns  Hopkins,  came 
to  us  from  Colorado  College  as  professor  of  Greek,  and  during 
twenty-eight  years  has  been  one  of  Stanford's  strongest  in- 
fluences for  high  scholarship  and  right  living.  Dr.  Frank 
Angell,  for  a  time  assistant  to  Wundt  at  Leipzig  and  imbued 
with  his  methods,  was  called  from  Cornell  as  professor  of 
Psychology.  Up  to  1917  he  also  served  the  University  as  chair- 
man of  the  committee  on  athletics,  standing  consistently  for 
clean  sport  and  honorable  methods  among  students,  coaches, 
and  professors.  It  was  through  Angell's  agency  that  Walter 
Camp,  dean  of  athletic  directors,  came  out  from  Yale  as  coach 
in  1892  and  1893,  since  which  time  his  name  has  been  con- 
tinuously honored  at  Stanford.  In  1916  Angell  was  for  some  * 
months  one  of  Hoover's  assistants  in  the  Commission  for 
Relief  in  Belgium,  inspecting  and  reporting  on  the  Belgian  side 
of  food  distribution,  "a  wonderful  organization  in  every  way 
worthy  to  be  set  alongside  of  the  C.  R.  B.  itself." 

As  instructor  in  Drawing,  and  later  professor  of  Graphic 
Arts,  came  Arthur  B.  Clark  from  Syracuse  University,  a  com- 
petent teacher  with  whose  influence  on  student  morale  I  shall 
later  deal. 

The  Engineering  departments  were  now  greatly  extended 
by  the  appointments  of  Albert  W.  Smith  in  Mechanical  En- 
gineering, Leander  M.  Hoskins  in  Applied  Mathematics,  and 
Charles  B.  Wing  in  Structural  Engineering.  These  men  all 
came  from  the  University  of  Wisconsin  —  Smith  and  Wing 
(like  their  intimate  friend,  David  Marx)  having  formerly  been 
members  of  the  Cornell  faculty.  In  choosing  them,  I  assured 

C  440  3 


18923  Hat/,  Stanford,  Hail! 

President  T.  C.  Chamberlin  that  I  was  paying  him  the  greatest 
possible  compliment  —  which  I  trusted  he  would  properly  ap- 
preciate! An  attempt  at  the  same  time  to  secure  Charles  H. 
Haskins  and  Frederick  J.  Turner  from  Wisconsin's  department 
of  History  was  unfortunately  less  successful. 

Smith,  who  enlivens  his  professional  duties  by  verse  making,  Smith 
is  the  author  of  our  University  Hymn,  for  which  Mary  Roberts  poet 
Smith  (now  Mrs.  Dane  Coolidge)  wrote  the  fine  original  music. 

HAIL,  STANFORD,  HAIL! 


Where  the  rolling  foothills  rise 
Up  toward  mountains  higher, 
Where  at  eve  the  Coast  Range  lies 
In  the  sunset  fire, 
Flushing  deep  and  paling, 
Here  we  raise  our  voices,  hailing 
Thee,  our  Alma  Mater. 

Chorus 

From  the  foothills  to  the  bay, 
It  shall  ring, 
As  we  sing, 

It  shall  ring  and  float  away; 
Hail,  Stanford,  hail! 
Hail,  Stanford,  hail! 

2 

Tender  vistas  ever  new 
Through  the  arches  meet  the  eyes, 
Where  the  red  roofs  rim  the  blue 
Of  the  sun-steeped  skies 
Flecked  with  cloudlets  sailing; 
Here  we  raise  our  voices,  hailing 
Thee,  our  Alma  Mater. 

3 

When  the  moonlight-bathed  arcade 
Stands  in  evening  calms, 

C  44i  3 


The  Days  of  a  Man  £1892 

When  the  light  wind  half  afraid 
Whispers  in  the  palms, 
Far  off  swelling,  failing, 
Student  voices  glad  are  hailing 
Thee,  our  Alma  Mater. 

After  a  successful  career  at  Stanford,  Smith  went  back  to 
Cornell  as  dean  of  the  Sibley  College  of  Engineering.  For 
the  past  two  years,  following  the  retirement  of  President 
Schurman,  he  has  acceptably  served  as  acting  president  of 
the  university. 

Wing  at  Wing  is  a  man  of  large  practical  ability  and  experience.    As 

bome  and  acting  chairman  of  the  California  State  Redwood  Park  Com- 
mission 1  since  February,  1911,  he  has  rendered  valuable  con- 
structive service  to  the  state  in  the  development  and  protec- 
tion of  a  beautiful  public  property.  Of  his  generous  relation  to 
the  local  municipality,  I  have  already  spoken.  During  America's 
participation  in  the  Great  War,  he  first  served  as  expert  Techni- 
cal Officer  with  the  23d  Engineers,  U.  S.  A.,  a  special  volunteer 
regiment  recruited  for  the  building  and  maintenance  of  high- 
ways. Before  its  departure  overseas,  Wing  conducted  the 
ordering  and  purchasing  of  an  enormous  volume  of  necessary 
material.  Commissioned  as  major,  afterward  lieutenant- 
colonel,  he  successfully  organized  the  construction  of  rail- 
ways, bridges,  and  roads  for  the  use  of  our  forces  in  France  — 
the  regiment's  final  assignment  being  the  supervision  (after 
the  Armistice)  of  the  work  of  20,000  men  engaged  in  the  build- 
ing of  roads  between  Verdun  and  the  Army  of  Occupation. 

Hoskins,  an  admirable  teacher  of  quiet  and  retiring  nature, 
is  greatly  appreciated  by  his  students,  who  "swear  by"  him 
on  all  occasions. 

Dr.  James  Perrin  Smith  joined  the  staff  as  professor  of 
Paleontology,  coming  to  us  from  the  University  of  Gottingen, 
though  having  been  previously  associated  with  Branner  on  the 
Geological  Survey  of  Arkansas.  As  investigator,  teacher,  and 
friend,  "J.  P."  has  exercised  a  most  wholesome  influence  over 
many  students  outside  his  department  as  well  as  within. 

Robert  E.  Allardice,  a  pupil  of  Chrystal  and  for  nine  years 

1  The  governor  of  the  state  being  ex  officio  chairman.  See  also  Chapter 
xxi,  page  519. 

C  442  3 


1892]  Additional  Professors 

assistant  professor  in  the  University  of  Edinburgh,  came  di- 
rectly from  that  institution  to  our  chair  of  Pure  Mathematics, 
which  he  has  held  ever  since.  Though  dealing  with  a  narrow 
professional  field,  he  is  a  man  of  generous  culture  and  wide 
literary  interests.  Lionel  R.  Lenox,  a  graduate  of  Columbia, 
a  former  colleague  of  Richardson's  at  Lehigh,  came  as  professor 
of  Analytical  Chemistry,  work  which  he  has  successfully  and 
faithfully  carried  for  twenty-seven  years.  Arley  B.  Show  was 
called  from  Doane  College,  Nebraska,  of  which  he  was  a  gradu- 
ate, to  our  chair  of  Medieval  History,  a  field  in  which  he  did  con- 
sistently solid  work  up  to  the  time  of  his  sudden  death  in  1920. 

Mrs.  Mary  Sheldon  Barnes,  wife  of  our  then  professor  of  Mary 
Education,  and  formerly  teacher  of  History  in  the  State  Normal  Sheldon 
School  at  Oswego,  New  York,  joined  the  Stanford  faculty  as  Barnes 
assistant  professor  of  History.     A  woman  of  remarkable  in- 
tellectual insight  and  unique  temperament,  of  frail  health  but 
serene,  indomitable  spirit,  she  worked  always  to  the  highest 
possible  limit  of  her  strength,  and  impressed  her  personality 
strongly  on  students.    She  died  in  London  in  1898. 

William  Henry  Hudson,  a  literary  scholar,  at  one  time 
secretary  to  Herbert  Spencer,  came  to  us  from  Cornell  as 
assistant  professor  of  English  Literature,  but  returned  to  London 
in  1900.  One  of  his  several  books  of  popular  essays  dealt  with 
the  Spanish  Missions  of  California.  Walter  Miller,  a  former 
student  in  the  Classical  School  at  Athens,  was  called  from  the 
University  of  Missouri  to  our  chair  of  Classical  Philology, 
which  he  held  until  1902.  From  here  he  went  to  Tulane  Uni- 
versity, and  is  now  dean  of  the  State  University  of  Missouri. 

Vernon  L.  Kellogg,  afterward  one  of  the  most  important  Kellogg 
factors  in  the  University's  development,  also  came  at  the  time 
of  which  I  write,  as  assistant  to  Professor  Comstock,  under 
whom  he  had  studied  at  Cornell.  Lecturing  the  preceding 
spring  at  Kansas  University,  I  had  been  most  favorably  im- 
pressed by  the  personality  and  work  of  this  young  man.  He 
was  then  state  entomologist  as  well  as  secretary  to  Chancellor 
Snow,  and  although  an  intense  specialist  in  certain  little- 
known  groups  of  insects,  he  had  at  the  same  time  a  fine  literary 
taste  and  a  ready  pen.  Coming  to  Stanford  at  my  insistence, 
he  rapidly  rose  to  an  independent  professorship  in  Entomology. 

C  443  3 


The  Days  of  a  Man  £1892 

After  Thoburn's  death  in  1899,  he  jointly  conducted  with  me 
the  lecture  course  in  Bionomics,  in  which  subject  he  showed 
admirable  accuracy  and  discrimination.  Meanwhile  we  wrote 
together  two  textbooks  which  have  had  a  wide  sale,  "Animal 
Life"  (1900)  and  "Evolution  and  Animal  Life"  (1907),  the 
latter  embodying  the  substance  of  our  lectures  on  those  topics. 

In  "Animal  Life"  we  attempted  to  put  in  clear  form,  for 
students'  use,  not  merely  a  set  of  zoological  facts,  but  also  the 
most  important  general  laws  governing  organic  development. 
Thus  for  the  first  time  in  a  school  text  the  principles  of  evolu- 
tion were  brought  into  relation  with  the  facts  of  biology.  In 
both  volumes,  moreover,  we  abandoned  conventional  wood- 
cuts for  fresh  photographs  reproduced  as  halftones,  a  feature 
followed  by  most  subsequent  authors  on  the  same  subject. 
A  varied  Among  Kellogg' s  later  publications  I  may  especially  men- 

career  tion  several  books  on  very  different  subjects,  each  most  ad- 
mirable of  its  kind:  "Darwinism  Today,"  "In  and  Out  of 
Florence,"  1  "Headquarters  Nights,"  a  study  of  the  mentality 
of  the  German  war  caste,  "Beyond  War,"  "Insect  Stories," 
"The  Food  Problem"  (with  Dr.  Alonzo  E.  Taylor),  and 
"Nuova,  the  New  Bee." 

Soon  after  the  outbreak  of  war,  Kellogg  went  to  Europe  as 
Hoover's  associate  on  the  Commission  for  Relief  in  Belgium, 
first  taking  charge  in  occupied  France  and  afterward  serving 
as  director,  with  headquarters  at  Brussels,  of  work  in  both 
Belgium  and  France. 

At  all  times,  however,  much  of  what  we  may  call  the  "diplo- 
matic" side  of  general  relief  fell  on  his  shoulders;  in  this  con- 
nection he  visited  Berlin,  Paris,  Warsaw,  Rome,  Vienna,  The 
Hague,  and  Le  Havre,  this  last  the  temporary  seat  of  the 
Belgian  Government.  For  such  service  he  possessed  special 
fitness  because  of  his  unquestioned  scientific  standing  abroad 
and  his  intimate  acquaintance  with  German  thought  and  life 
—  early  gained  by  study  and  travel  in  Germany  —  added  to 
a  sympathetic  knowledge  of  both  Italy  and  France. 

In  1919  the  American  Relief  Administration  made  good  use 

of  his  general  ability  and  adaptability  in  missions  to  Poland 

and  Germany;   as  head  of  Hoover's  first  food  mission  to  Poland 

he  made  the  primary  arrangements  which  led  to  the  provision- 

1  Published  under  the  pseudonym* of  "Max  Vernon." 

C  444  3 


1892]  Later  Arrivals 

ing  of  that  country  on  a  large  scale.  Associated  also  with  Hoover 
while  the  latter  was  United  States  Food  Administrator,  he 
attended  conferences  of  the  Inter-allied  Scientific  Food  Com- 
mission in  Paris  and  Rome.  Meanwhile  he  took  an  active 
part  in  the  National  Research  Council  at  Washington,  of  which 
he  is  now  permanent  secretary. 

During  all  this  time  his  efforts  were  supplemented  by  Mrs.   Charlotte 
Kellogg' s  splendid  services  both  at  home  and  abroad.    As  the  Kellogg 
only  woman  in  the  "C.  R.  B."  to  be  admitted  to  Belgium, 
she  worked  unremittingly  for  the  welfare  of  its  women  and 
children;    to  her  devoted  ability  they  gratefully  testify,  and 
her  name  will  not  soon  be  forgotten  by  them.     More  recently 
she  has  traveled  through  Poland  and  Serbia,  with  a  view  to 
ascertaining  the  outlook  and  needs  of  her  sisters  there. 

One  of  the  most  important  additions  of  the  year,  though  George 
not  in  the  teaching  staff,  was  George  A.  Clark,  secretary  to  Clark 
the  president,  and  later  academic  secretary  of  the  University. 
Clark  entered  Stanford  in  1891  as  a  graduate  student  in  Latin 
from  Minnesota.  His  conscientious  and  methodical  devotion 
to  all  phases  of  executive  work  made  him  an  indispensable  aid 
throughout  my  administration.  Absolutely  devoid  of  self- 
interest,  he  never  shirked  a  duty  and  never  forgot  a  detail. 
His  relation  to  the  Fur  Seal  commissions  (of -which  he  was  also 
secretary)  I  shall  later  mention.  By  his  death  in  1916  the 
University  was  deprived  of  one  of  its  most  valued  members. 

In  the  summer  of  1893  six  more  professors  were  added  to 
the  staff".  Nathan  Abbott,  in  Law,  a  graduate  of  Yale,  was  a 
unique  character,  fond  of  paradoxes,  and  a  great  favorite  with 
his  colleagues;  in  1907  he  left  to  accept  a  chair  at  Columbia, 
where  he  still  remains.  Dr.  Edward  A.  Ross,  a  Johns  Hop- 
kins man,  came  from  Cornell  as  professor  of  Economic  Theory 
and  Finance;  in  1900,  he  left  Stanford,  accepting  a  chair 
of  Sociology  in  the  University  of  Nebraska.  Dr.  John  E. 
Matzke,  a  well-known  philologist,  was  called  from  Johns 
Hopkins  to  the  chair  of  Romanic  Languages,  as  successor  to 
Dr.  Todd.  This  position  he  filled  most  acceptably  until  his 
lamented  death  in  1913  in  the  City  of  Mexico,  whither  he  had 
gone  as  Stanford's  representative  at  the  inauguration  of  the 
National  University  there. 

C44S  3 


The  Days  of  a  Man  £1892 

Fair-  To  the  original  group  of  sturdy  and  devoted  engineers 
dough's  trained  at  Cornell  we  now  added  John  C.  L.  Fish  in  Railroad 
war  service  Engjneermg.  Rufus  L.  Green,  already  mentioned,  accepted  a 
professorship  in  Pure  Mathematics.  H.  Rushton  Fairclough, 
a  graduate  of  Johns  Hopkins,  came  from  the  University  of 
Toronto  to  the  department  of  Latin,  of  which  he  has  long  been 
the  head.  Besides  his  excellent  academic  record  (in  the  course 
of  which  he  was'for  one  year  director  of  the  American  Classical 
School  in  Rome)  I  should  mention  also  Dr.  Fairclough's  two 
years  of  distinguished  service  as  Red  Cross  executive  in  Switzer- 
land and  Montenegro.  As  commissioner  —  with  the  rank  of 
lieutenant-colonel  —  to  the  latter  country,  he  was  instrumental 
in  permanently  establishing  four  hospitals,  three  orphanages, 
and  one  industrial  school,  as  supplementary  to  civilian  relief. 
In  addition  to  the  six  already  named,  Stewart  W.  Young,  a 
gifted  research  chemist  who  graduated  from  Cornell,  came  as 
volunteer  instructor,  rising  soon  to  be  professor  of  Physical 
Chemistry.  

All  teachers  thus  far  enumerated  had  part  in  the 
formative  period  of  Stanford  University.  Each 
succeeding  year  added  others,  many  of  them  vitally 
related  to  the  institution's  later  development  and 
cherished  by  us  as  friends.  But  as  this  is  not  a  his- 
tory of  the  University,  I  feel  forced  to  limit  further 
special  references  to  occasions  that  may  arise,  any 
Tried  and  other  procedure  being  quite  impossible.  Even  less 
true  possible  is  it  to  do  justice  to  individual  faculty 
women  whose  faithful  devotion  has  been  so  im- 
portant a  factor  in  their  husbands'  success. 

At  the  time  of  this  writing  (1920)  the  teaching 
staff,  exclusive  of  departmental  assistants,  numbers 
over  250,  more  than  fifty  of  whom  are  graduates  of 
Stanford  itself.  Stanford  men  also  hold  chairs  in 
nearly  every  prominent  institution  in  the  country, 
and  we  are  further  represented  in  the  University  of 
Sydney  and  in  at  least  three  universities  in  Japan. 

C4463 


CHAPTER  NINETEEN 


IN  the  early  fall  of  1892  I  once  more  had  the  op-  op- 
portunity to  help  in  testing  a  noteworthy  me-  •£™tfl'J 
chanical  invention.  This  involved  the  ascent  of  the  automobile 
neighboring  peak  of  Mount  Hamilton  (seat  of  the 
Lick  Observatory)  in  the  first  automobile  on  the 
Pacific  Coast.  For  by  that  time  the  conception  of 
the  horseless  vehicle  had  begun  to  spread,  the 
gasoline  engine  having  made  possible  its  practical 
realization.  In  France  a  special  interest  had  already 
developed,  and  a  "self-moving"  wagon,  automobile, 
was  minutely  described  in  a  French  engineering 
journal.  Using  the  information  there  given,  a  clever 
mechanician  of  San  Francisco,  Elliott  by  name, 
proceeded  to  construct  a  machine  of  his  own.  It 
ran  well  on  level  ground,  but  a  test  in  hill  climbing 
was  of  course  necessary.  This  being  arranged  by 
the  San  Francisco  Examiner,  Bailey  Millard,  then 
its  editor,  asked  me  to  accompany  Elliott  on  the 
Mount  Hamilton  trip.  Following  in  a  carriage  were 
representatives  of  the  press,  as  well  as  Albert  W. 
Smith,  our  newly  appointed  professor  of  Mechan- 
ical Engineering,  with  whom  I  changed  seats  toward 
the  end  of  the  run. 

The  machine  crept  gingerly  up  the  twenty-six 
miles  of  sharply  winding  road  to  the  summit,  and 
in  coming  down  wore  out  all  the  crude  brakes 
devised  by  the  inventor.  But  the  essential  fact 
remained  that  a  horseless  vehicle  built  in  Cali- 
fornia had  successfully  climbed  4400  feet  of  mountain. 

C447  3 


The  Days  of  a  Man  [1892 

During  the  months  that  followed  I  was  very 
busy  in  different  ways,  coordinating  and  solidifying 
the  work  of  the  University,  and  at  the  same  time 
adding  to  my  acquaintance  by  lecturing  throughout 
the  state,  and  by  university  extension  work  in 
extension  Oakland,  San  Francisco,  and  San  Jose.  In  the 
course  of  these  efforts  near  home  and  farther  afield, 
then  and  later  on  as  well,  I  met  a  host  of  interesting 
people  —  men  and  women  of  vigor  and  initiative, 
of  whom  California  has  always  had  more  than  her 
share.  Many  of  them,  I  am  happy  to  say,  became 
our  intimate  friends  as  the  years  went  by;  nearly 
all,  I  trust,  have  a  kindly  feeling  for  me  and  my 
wife;  some  are  known  and  admired  far  beyond  the 
confines  of  the  state.  Of  a  few,  relatively,  I  shall 
now  speak  more  or  less  briefly,  and  others  will  later 
cross  my  path;  but  a  much  greater  number  must 
remain  unnamed,  even  though  by  no  means  un- 
remembered. 

Luther  Soon  after  my  arrival  in  California  I  made  the 

Burbank  r  acquaintance  of  a  scientific  man  of  high  rank, 
unique  in  character  and  method,  and  developed 
wholly  outside  the  academic  influence.  Luther 
Burbank,  plant  breeder  and  plant  creator,  stands 
with  the  first  in  his  field.  His  fine  art  rests  on  such 
a  knowledge  of  plant  inheritance  that  by  means  of 
crossing  and  selection  he  produces  almost  unerringly 
the  definite  results  at  which  he  aims.  With  plums, 
cactus,  walnuts,  and  many  kinds  of  flowers,  Mr. 
Burbank  has  been  especially  successful.  His  garden 
at  Sebastopol,  near  Santa  Rosa,  is  one  of  the  most 
interesting  experimental  stations  in  the  world.  From 
1905  to  1912  he  gave  lectures  at  Stanford  on 

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1892]  A  Unique  Genius 

plant   breeding,  in  connection  with  the  course  in 
Bionomics. 

For  several  years  the  Carnegie  Institution  allowed 
a  generous  grant  for  the  continuation  of  his  work. 
That  arrangement,  however,  carried  so  many  neces- 
sary limitations  that  it  became  irksome  to  the 
recipient,  who  must  proceed  in  his  own  way,  making 
thousands  of  experiments  at  once  and  therefore  not 
maintaining  the  minute  records  which  would  give 
his  results  greater  scientific  authority  but  meanwhile 
enormously  restrict  his  output. 

Burbank  is  a  modest,  quiet  worker,  with  a  keen 
eye,  a  deft  hand,  a  quick  intelligence,  and  a  sensi- 
tive soul.  He  has  put  into  practical  use  the  in- 
ductions of  Darwin,  and  has  enriched  the  world 
with  fruits  and  flowers  which,  save  for  him,  would 
never  have  been  more  than  conceivable  possibilities. 
Among  our  men  of  science  he  is  assured  a  high  and 
honored  place,  not  as  "wizard"  or  "clever  operator," 
but  as  a  man  of  generous  views,  exact  knowledge, 
and  noble  character. 

In  an  address  in  San  Francisco  in  1904,  Professor  Tribute  by 
Hugo   De  Vries  of  the  University  of  Amsterdam  De  Vries 
spoke  of  his  American   colleague  with  much   en- 
thusiasm: 

A  unique,  great  genius!  To  see  him  is  the  prime  reason  for 
my  coming  to  America.  He  works  to  definite  ends.  He  ought 
to  be  not  only  cherished,  but  helped;  unaided,  he  cannot  do 
his  best.  He  should  be  as  well  known  and  as  widely  appre- 
ciated in  California  as  among  scientific  men  in  Europe. 

This  tribute  by  the  master  of  plant  genetics  was 
virtually  BurbamVs  first  introduction  to  the  general 
scientific  world. 

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The  Days  of  a  Man  £1892 

In  the  University  of  California  were  numerous 
teachers  of  ability  and  high  character.  Best  known 

A  reverent  and  best  beloved  was  Dr.  Joseph  Le  Conte,  pro- 
fessor  of  Biology,  whose  acquaintance  I  first  made 
in  1880.  Le  Conte  had  been  one  of  the  three  Harvard 
students  who  composed  Agassiz's  original  class  in 
America,  the  others  being  William  James  and  David 
A.  Wells.  He  had  a  singularly  sunny  disposition, 
a  lucid  literary  style,  and  a  deep  feeling  for  nature. 
An  evolutionist  of  advanced  type,  he  was,  neverthe- 
less, eager  to  conciliate  rather  than  to  confute 
opponents,  so  that  his  illuminating  lectures  on  the 
so-called  conflicts  between  science  and  religion  did 
much  to  reconcile  believers  to  the  fact  that  the  two 
phases  of  human  thought  must,  as  Darwin  insisted, 
"each  go  its  own  way,  even  though  the  meeting 
point  be  far  off." 

Moses  and  Dr.  Bernard  Moses,  professor  of  Political  Science, 
a  man  cf  broa(j  mind  and  strong  will,  was  for  years 
a  very  influential  member  of  the  California  faculty. 
George  H.  Howison  of  the  chair  of  Philosophy  was 
the  ultra-Hegelian  of  America.  He  preached  the 
reality  of  the  unreal,  the  objective  existence  of 
innate  ideas,  the  supernatural  nature  of  the  state  as 
an  entity  existing  apart  from  the  units  that  com- 
pose it.  Speaking  at  one  time  of  the  "divine  origin" 
of  government,  he  was  followed  by  Dr.  Moses,  who 
cleverly  pleaded  for  the  divine  origin  of  wheel- 
barrows! A  state,  argued  Moses,  is  an  instrument 
to  serve  a  need  of  humanity.  So,  in  its  degree,  is 
the  wheelbarrow. 

Being  at  one  time  invited  by  Howison  to  speak 
before  his  Philosophical  Society,  I  gave  an  address 
which  I  named  "Standeth  God  within  the  Shadow." 

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1892]    Our  Contemporaries  at  Berkeley 

In  it  I  set  forth  certain  principles  with  which  my 
mind  had  for  some  time  been  occupied,  and  which 
constituted  a  sort  of  literary  anticipation  of  what 
I  later  embodied  in  my  essay,   "The  Stability  of 
Truth/' x  elaborating  the  doctrines  afterward  known 
as  "Pragmatism."     Dr.  Howison,  though  polite  as  pragma- 
always,  wa,s  visibly  disturbed  by  my  deviation  from  tism 
his  consistent  idealism. 

Dr.  Martin  Kellogg,  professor  of  Latin,  then  act- 
ing president,  later  president  of  the  institution,  was 
a  gentle  spirit,  quite  averse  to  assuming  responsi- 
bility of  any  kind.  Following  his  death  in  1899, 
Dr.  Benjamin  Ide  Wheeler,  professor  of  Greek  at 
Cornell,  was  selected  for  the  presidency.  Of  Wheeler 
and  his  successful  administration  I  shall  subsequently 
have  occasion  to  speak.  Among  other  able  Cali- 
fornia scholars  and  friends  of  these  and  more  recent 
days,  I  must  mention  only  the  one  whose  work  lay 
nearest  mine,  Dr.  William  E.  Ritter,  professor  of 
Zoology,  an  efficient  investigator  to  whom  was  later 
entrusted  the  direction  of  the  Scripps  Institute  of 
Marine  Zoology  at  La  Jolla,  near  San  Diego. 

But  any  reference  to  the  University  of  California 
brings  up  the  name  of  one  who  did  most  to  strengthen  Hearst 
and  adorn  the  institution.  Phcebe  Hearst  was  a 
woman  of  great  beauty  of  feature,  of  broad  interests, 
especially  in  education,  and  possessed  of  a  steady 
and  constant  purpose.  Her  numerous  benefactions, 
large  and  small,  gave  her  a  warm  place  in  the  hearts 
of  the  people.  Toward  my  wife  and  myself  she  was 
always  most  considerate;  and  when  circumstances 
permitted,  we  went  as  guests  to  her  beautiful  coun- 

1  Printed  in  The  Popular  Science  Monthly;  afterward  (1912)  expanded  into 
a  volume  bearing  the  same  title. 

1:451 n 


The  Days  of  a  Man  £1892 

try  home,  Hacienda  de  la  Posada  de  Verona,  in  the 
Livermore  Valley. 

Susan         With   Mrs.    Susan  Lincoln   Mills,   the  venerable 
Lincoln   foimcier  and  first  president  of  Mills  Seminary  for 

Mills  T  .  r  ..  •          i  A 

women,  I  soon  became  well  acquainted.  As  a 
graduate  of  Mount  Holyoke,  she  had  developed  her 
school  on  the  same  lines ;  and  when  Mount  Holyoke 
was  expanded  to  the  rank  and  title  of  a  college, 
Mills  followed,  while  at  the  same  time  retaining  its 
elementary  departments.  This  situation,  however, 
had  become  anomalous,  for  it  is  no  longer  possible 
successfully  to  maintain  college  and  secondary  work 
in  the  same  institution.  Accordingly,  at  my  advice, 
Mrs.  Mills  was  persuaded  (even  if  rather  reluctantly) 
to  abandon  the  preparatory  work.  The  transition 
from  seminary  to  college,  necessarily  abrupt,  brought 
about  a  sudden  and  somewhat  disconcerting  re- 
duction both  in  enrollment  and  in  income,  but  later 
years  have  abundantly  demonstrated  the  wisdom 
of  the  move.  From  time  to  time  I  visited  the 
institution  both  as  friend  and  counselor,  for  like 
every  one  else  who  knew  the  founder,  I  valued 
highly  her  sterling  intelligence  and  devotion. 

Among  my  new  friends  I  counted  also  the  heads 
of  several  private  secondary  schools  of  a  high  order. 
William  T.  Reid  of  Belmont,  our  near  neighbor, 
was  a  man  of  genuine  learning  and  broad  vision,  a 
Harvard  graduate  who  had  been  for  a  time  president 
of  the  State  University,  and  who  from  the  beginning 
supported  us  loyally.  A  little  farther  off,  at  San 
Mateo,  Dr.  A.  L.  Brewer  and  his  son,  William  A. 
Brewer,  both  men  of  gentle  breeding  and  scholarly 
taste,  in  charge  of  St.  Matthew's  School  for  Boys, 


18923    Private  and  Public  School  Teachers 

maintained  cordial  relations  with  us.  About  the  bay 
Miss  Sarah  B.  Hamlin  in  San  Francisco  and  Miss 
Anna  Head  conducted  excellent  preparatory  schools 
for  girls.  At  Nordhoff,  in  the  Ojai  Valley  above 
Ventura,  Sherman  Thacher  from  Yale  was  carrying 
on  an  interesting  experiment.  There,  under  con- 
ditions peculiar  to  California,  in  the  upper  reaches 
of  an  ample  river  valley  almost  surrounded  by 
granite  mountains,  he  has  developed  an  excellent 
combination  of  study,  play,  and  outdoor  life. 

A  prominent  figure  in  the  rapidly  developing 
public  schools  of  those  days  was  John  Swett,  city 
superintendent  of  San  Francisco,  an  original  and 
resourceful  pioneer  in  education.  Miss  Jean  Parker, 
a  woman  of  clear  mind  and  beautiful  character,  was 
leaving  an  indelible  imprint  on  the  secondary  work 
in  the  same  city.  Charles  H.  Allen,  president  of 
the  San  Jose  Normal  School,  was  widely  known 
and  beloved  as  an  inspiring  leader.  To  Mrs.  Sarah 
B.  Cooper,  I  have  already  referred.1 

Among  the  school  people  in  southern  California 
at  that  time,  I  may  mention  Edward  Hyatt  of 
Riverside,  afterward  state  superintendent.  Our 
acquaintance  began  auspiciously  in  the  summer  of 
1891.  Mr.  Hyatt  then  appeared  in  my  office  with  An 
a  prospective  student  and  a  jar  of  desert  snakes,  aus 

/        .  ,  .          .  r~J  ,  combina- 

an  endearing  combination!  len  years  later  we  en-  /,-on 
rolled  the  first  of  a  continuous  Hyatt  Family  series, 
eight  in  number,  including  Miss  Stella  McAllister, 
an  adopted  daughter;  of  these,  seven  have  already 
graduated  and  one  is  now  in  the  University,  while 
a  ninth  has  made  application  for  admittance  in  due 
time. 

1  See  Chapter  v,  page  122. 

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The  Days  of  a  Man  £1892 

The  names  of  many  other  fine  and  devoted  ^spirits 
crowd  on  the  mind,  but  space  is  limited  and  I  must 
pass  on. 

2 

In  the  '90' s  San  Francisco  was  still  the  literary 
center  of  California,  although  Los  Angeles  was 
rapidly  forging  forward.  But  as  a  city  the  latter 
was  very  young,  for  at  the  time  of  my  visit  in  1880 
it  was  only  a  half-Mexican  village.  Pasadena  was 
then  still  known  as  the  "Indiana  Colony,"  and 
Riverside  had  just  received  its  picturesque  but  not 
too  appropriate  name. 

The  era  of  Bret  Harte,  the  first  outbreak  of 
Overland  literature,  was  long  since  past,  but  the 
creative  impulse  remained  vigorous  here.  More- 
over, if  poetry  and  the  arts  draw  inspiration  from 
varied  and  beautiful  surroundings,  they  will  ever 
find  a  natural  home  in  California. 

rhe  singer  Easily  the  most  picturesque  personality  on  the 
of  the  coast  when  we  came  was  Joaquin  Miller,  a  unique 
figure  —  tall,  straight,  broad-shouldered,  long-haired, 
and  "bearded  like  a  pard."  A  big,  soft  sombrero, 
high  top  boots,  and  coat  to  match  completed  the 
picture.  A  poseur  undoubtedly,  but  simple-hearted 
as  a  child  and  altogether  delightful.  He  was,  more- 
over, a  true  poet,  with  a  fine  sense  of  word 
color  and  rhythmical  values,  as  some  of  his  verses, 
particularly  those  on  Egypt,  Columbus,  and  Walker 
in  Nicaragua,  amply  testify. 

In  December,  1891,  I  invited  him  to  address  our 
students.  On  arriving,  he  explained  that  when  he 
spoke  before  an  audience,  he  always  wore  a  white 
rose  in  his  buttonhole.  To  me  it  was  a  new  idea 

C  454  3 


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18923  A  Group  of  Poets 

to  look  for  roses  at  that  season?  but  fortunately  I 
found  one  in  the  Escondite  garden.  The  lecture 
was  entitled  "Education  in  China."  It  treated  of 
many  current  subjects,  —  affection  of  doves,  de- 
votion to  an  idea,  significance  of  world  peace,  — • 
almost  the  only  topics  not  mentioned  being  China 
and  Education,  and  the  text  being  from  a  new  song 
of  his,  then  unpublished : 

There  are  many  tomorrows,  my  love,  my  love, 
There  is  only  one  today. 

His  own  lines,  inherently  musical,  he  read  most 
charmingly. 

Looking  at  his  great  boots,  little  Knight  piped  up : 
I  know  why  they  call  you  'Walk-een.'  It's  be- 
cause you  walk  so  much!" — which  infantile  joke 
seemed  to  please  the  poet  mightily. 

Ina  Coolbrith,  a  woman  of  great  personal  charm, 
long  city  librarian  of  Oakland  and  afterward  in 
charge  of  the  Mercantile  Library  in  San  Francisco, 
had  already  earned  unquestioned  standing  as  a 
writer  of  delightful  verse.  Her  later  unofficial 
recognition  as  "Poet  Laureate"  of  the  state  is 
amply  justified.  John  Vance  Cheney,  a  man  of 
literary  taste  and  ability  as  evidenced  in  a  discrim- 
inating output  of  both  poetry  and  prose,  belonged 
at  that  time  to  the  local  coterie.  As  head  of  the 
San  Francisco  Public  Library,  and  later  of  the 
Newberry  Library  in  Chicago,  he  lived  in  the  con- 
genial atmosphere  of  books  instead  of  that  of 
briefs  to  which  he  had  originally  devoted  himself. 

Edwin  Markham  was  then  principal  of  the  Uni- 
versity Practice  School  of  Oakland.  In  1899,  "The 
Man  with  the  Hoe"  gave  him  a  national  fame 

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"The Man  and  placed  him  permanently  in  the  literary  class. 

with  the  of  its  poetic  merit  there  is  no  question;  its  historic 
justice  may,  however,  be  doubted.  "The  Man 
with  the  Hoe,"  "brother  of  the  ox,"  as  painted 
by  Millet,  was  not  brought  to  his  low  estate  by 
centuries  of  industrial  oppression.  He  was  rather 
primitive  and  aboriginal,  persisting  in  a  competitive 
world  mainly  because  wars  had  destroyed  gener- 
ations of  self-extricating,  freedom-loving  peasantry. 
He  represents  "the  man  who  is  left." 

Cheney,  in  his  fine  response  to  Markham's  poem 
(for  which  he  used  the  same  title)  deals  with  an 
entirely  different  type  of  peasantry  from  that 
conceived  by  either  Millet  or  Markham.  His  is 
the  vigorous,  unspoiled,  independent  man  of  the 
fields,  — 

Long-wrought  and  molded  with  a  mother's  care 
Before  she  set  him  there. 

Of  his  rude  realm,  ruler  and  demi-god, 
Lord  of  the  rock  and  clod. 

No  blot,  no  monster,  no  unsightly  thing, 
The  soil's  long-lineaged  King; 

His  changeless  realm,  he  knows  it  and  commands; 
Erect  enough  he  stands. 

Edward  Robeson  Taylor,  the  versatile  head  of 
the  Hastings  Law  School,  physician  and  lawyer 
alike,  was  the  author  of  numerous  sonnets,  serious 
and  artistic,  his  translations  of  the  Spanish  poet, 
Heredia,  being  especially  admired. 

Charles  Warren  Stoddard,  the  author  of  "South 
Sea  Idyls,"  was  a  gracious  writer  both  in  prose  and 
verse,  and  a  man  of  most  winning  personality,  who 

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1892]  California  Writers 

counted  a  host  of  friends  wherever  he  went.  The  The 
faithful  chronicler  of  "the  splendid,  idle  forties"  of 
Alta  California,  the  days  "before  the  gringo  came," 
was  Mrs.  Gertrude  F.  Atherton,  great-grandniece  of 
Benjamin  Franklin;  in  recent  years  the  scenes  of  her 
sparkling  novels  and  sketches  have  often  been  laid 
in  Europe,  where  she  has  spent  many  years.  John 
Bonner,  essayist  and  literary  critic,  seemed  in  his 
virile  personality  to  embody  some  of  the  color  of 
the  passing  era,  to  which  he  properly  belonged. 
With  Lucius  H.  Foote,  a  scholarly  poet  of  wide 
public  interests,  I  had  later  close  relations  in  the 
management  of  the  Academy  of  Sciences. 

In  Los  Angeles,  The  Land  of  Sunshine,  a  small  but  The  Land 
vivid   "Monthly  Magazine  of  California   and   the  °f 

.~          t  ..        ,  .  r     .          i     «n«  i-  Sunshine 

Southwest,  the  creation  ot  its  brilliant  editor,  group 
Charles  F.  Lummis,  —  California's  literary  dynamo, 
of  whom  more  later,1  —  levied  toll  on  an  admirable 
group  in  no  sense  purely  local.  As  a  matter  of  fact, 
many  of  them  were  as  well  known  to  Eastern  circles 
as  to  their  admirers  here,  and  of  some  I  have  already 
spoken. 

Among  them  was  Margaret  Collier  Graham,  a 
woman  of  rare  wit  and  noble  character.  Her 
"Stories  of  the  Foothills"  are  full  of  color;  her 
essays  reveal  great  sanity,  balance,  and  devotion  to 
right  living.  Mary  Austin  we  did  not  meet  face  to 
face  for  a  number  of  years,  but  her  rare  sketches  of 
life  and  nature  in  an  unfrequented  Sierran  district 
compelled  immediate  admiration,  for  to  the  new 
atmospheric  note  was  joined  a  clean  and  perfect 
artistry  of  phrase  and  figure,  making  "The  Land 

1  See  Chapter  xxiv,  page  621. 

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The  Days  of  a  Man  1:1892 

of  Little  Rain"  and  "The  Flock"  classics  of  their 
kind.  Of  her  later  work  I  need  not  speak,  as  it 
deals  for  the  most  part  with  a  less  specialized  en- 
vironment. 

Unique  in  her  way  among  these  so-called  "Cali- 
fornians"  was  Mrs.  Charlotte  Perkins  Stetson  — 
now  Mrs.  Oilman  —  lecturer,  reformer,  critic,  and 
author  of  clever,  mainly  satirical  verse.  During  its 
early  years,  Mrs.  Stetson  was  a  frequent  visitor  at 
Stanford  University. 

The  dean        With  Charles  F.  Holder  of  Pasadena,  well  known 

of  anglers  as  a  man  of  letters,  biographer,  and  naturalist,  I 
had  many  friendly  relations.  In  California  he  was 
perhaps  most  gratefully  recognized  as  the  dean  of 
anglers,  the  special  expert  and  exponent  of  the  joys 
of  fishing  for  tuna,  swordfish,  and  other  monsters  of 
the  sea  at  Avalon  on  Santa  Catalina  Island;  of  a 
book  called  "  Fish  Stories,"  Holder  and  I  were  joint 
authors.  George  Wharton  James,  gentle  apostle  of 
the  out-of-doors,  friend  of  the  Indians  and  historian 
of  the  Missions,  I  first  met  on  Mount  Lowe  above 
Pasadena,  where  he  appeared  as  expositor  of  the 
geological  and  scenic  surroundings. 

Good  Prominent  in  general  Los  Angeles  circles  was  Dr. 

citizens  Norman  Bridge,  an  able  physician,  a  successful 
financier,  a  generous  friend,  and  the  author  of  charm- 
ing essays  on  current  social  topics  in  literature  and 
philosophy.  In  the  same  city  labored  "Bob" 
(Robert  J.)  Burdette,  affectionately  remembered  the 
country  over  for  the  warm  heart  and  fine  wit  he  had 
displayed  as  humorist  of  the  Burlington  Hawkeye. 
I  knew  him  also  as  a  veteran  of  the  Civil  War,  author 
of  "The  Drums  of  the  Forty-seventh,"  a  history 
of  his  regiment,  and,  incidentally,  a  telling  arraign- 

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18923  Priest  of  the  Sierra 

merit  of  war.  The  most  unconventionally  forcible 
among  the  clergy  of  the  state,  he  was  now  express- 
ing still  another  side  of  his  versatile  nature  from  a 
Baptist  pulpit. 

His  marriage  later  to  Mrs.  Clara  Bradley  Baker 
of  Pasadena  brought  two  effective  workers  under 
one  roof.  Mrs.  Burdette,  a  woman  of  unusual 
ability  along  many  lines,  is  a  prominent  leader  in 
the  Federation  of  Women's  Clubs,  active  in  every 
good  cause  touching  city  and  nation. 

Of  my  earlier  acquaintance  with  John  Muir, 
priest  of  the  High  Sierra,  I  have  previously  had  Keith 
occasion  to  speak.  "Interpreting  the  land  in  terms 
of  color,"  —  as  Lummis  once  put  it, — William 
Keith,  Muir's  countryman  by  birth  as  well  as  by 
adoption,  stood  easily  at  the  head  of  the  guild  of 
local  painters.  Mr.  Keith's  early  pictures  were 
mainly  direct  and  literal  renderings  of  appealing 
blocks  of  landscape.  His  finer  canvases  —  by  which 
he  is  fairly  to  be  judged  —  showed  a  deeper  insight. 
With  much  of  the  emotional  discernment  of  Inness, 
his  friend,  and  something  of  Corot's  poetic  spirit- 
ualization  of  nature,  he  may  be  said  to  have  ex- 
pressed on  this  coast,  in  his  way,  the  romanticism 
of  the  Fontainebleau  school.  His  vogue  has  latterly 
declined  here;  his  best  efforts,  nevertheless,  remain 
what  they  always  were,  a  source  of  permanent 
satisfaction  to  many. 

Characteristic  of  many  Keiths  is  a  bright  patch 
of  sunlight  piercing  the  somber  shadow  of  live  oaks. 
Once  a  brother  artist  said  to  him:  "I  know  a  kind 
of  soap  which  will  take  out  those  white  spots." 
But  the  sun  was  allowed  to  shine  through  the  dark 

C  459  3 


The  Days  of  a  Man  [1892 

foliage  until  the  end,  and  in  some  such  way  the 
warmth  and  cheer  of  the  man's  personality  bright- 
ened the  lives  of  his  friends. 

jack  To  a  generation  younger  than  any  of  those  men- 

London  tioned  above  belonged  Jack  London,  the  most 
widely  known  Californian  author  since  Bret  Harte. 
London,  according  to  his  own  statements,  was 
brought  up  in  Oakland  as  a  "wharf  rat,"  regarding 
a  capacity  for  hard  drink  as  the  test  of  manliness, 
and  burdened  with  various  other  notions  that  had 
to  be  later  unlearned.  In  "John  Barleycorn,"  the 
most  powerful  temperance  document  in  existence, 
he  himself  wrote  about  those  years  with  the  utmost 
frankness.  He  was  a  thorough  master  of  trenchant 
English  and  picturesque  incident.  His  venturesome 
soul  and  a  defiant  attitude  toward  conventional 
society  early  led  him  to  the  wilds  of  Alaska,  as  well 
as  to  those  of  "darkest  London."  Notwithstanding 
a  repellent  touch  of  the  cynical  and  brutal,  his 
stories  are  recognized  masterpieces  of  their  kind. 
His  death  in  the  prime  of  life  was  a  distinct  setback 
to  American  literature. 

I  first  met  him  in  Oakland  as  an  attendant  at  my 
university  extension  course  on  Evolution.  He  was 
then  a  stocky  young  fellow  of  great  physical  strength 
and  endurance  as  well  as  of  decided  individuality. 
Being  much  interested  in  the  subject  of  my  lectures, 
he  became  in  some  degree  an  intellectual  disciple,  a 
fact  he  freely  recognized  and  testified  to  in  "The  Call 
of  the  Wild  "  and  other  tales.  At  one  time  I  asked  him 
to  come  to  Stanford  to  read  from  his  Alaskan  stories. 
His  manner  was  both  modest  and  effective,  and 
awakened  the  kindly  personal  interest  of  his  hearers. 

£460] 


1892]  California  journalism 

Somewhat    of   the    same    intellectual    type    was  Frank 
Frank  Norris,  a  writer  of  more  orderly  method  and  Norris 
deeper  human  insight,  with  scarcely  less  of  virile 
force.     The   themes  of  "  McTeague,"   and  of  his 
powerful  trilogy  of  greed,1  however,  rarely  wandered 
from  San  Francisco.    His  work,  cut  short  by  death 
almost  at  its  beginning,  gave  promise  of  remarkable 
achievement    in    the    interpretation    of   American 
psychology. 

Among  the  younger  women,  Geraldine  Bonner 
and  Miriam  Michelson  deal  with  human  life  in 
vigorous  fashion,  the  one  especially  with  Californians, 
the  other  with  the  world  at  large. 


California  journalism,  at  the  time  of  which  I 
write,  was  vigorously  personal  and,  in  its  highest 
ranges,  bitterly  sarcastic,  loves  and  hates  being  un- 
blushingly  laid  before  the  public.  In  his  role  of 
literary  critic  and  public  castigator,  Ambrose  Bierce  Eierce 
was  facile  princeps.  His  biting  "Prattle"  column 
in  the  San  Francisco  Examiner  was  devoted  to 
cynical  criticism  and  sarcastic  attacks  upon  writers 
of  bad  English,  local  versifiers,  and  those  whom  he 
deemed  hypocrites.  He  thus  served,  though  un- 
graciously, a  certain  useful  purpose  in  repressing 
ill-founded  enthusiasms  and  in  reducing  the  output 
of  inflated  writing.  A  number  of  victims  not  other- 
wise famous  were  embalmed  in  satirical  poems 
entitled  "  Black  Beetles  in  Amber." 

One  of  Bierce's  characteristic  ways  was  to  lend 
high  encouragement  to  struggling  young  poets  until, 

1  "The  Wheat,"  "The  Pit,"  and  "The  Octopus." 

£461  3 


The  Days  of  a  Man  £1892 

bored  by  their  adulation,  he  would  turn  them  down 
hard  in  sudden  wantonness.  Very  few  people 
ventured  to  cross  swords  with  "the  Prattler."  But 
John  P.  Irish,  a  prominent  political  leader,  an  elo- 
quent and  effective  speaker,  once  relieved  his  feelings 
in  cutting  words:  "Now  comes  Ambrose  Bierce, 
poor  professional  polecat!" 

Bierce  had  served  in  the  army,  and  his  best  work 
is  found  in  a  series  of  sketches  entitled  "Stories  of 
Soldiers  and  Civilians,"  of  which  the  two  most 
powerful  are  "Killed  at  Resaca"  and  the  "Horseman 
in  the  Air."  When  the  Mexican  Revolution  broke 
out,  he  left  to  take  part  in  it.  No  certain  infor- 
mation as  to  his  fate  was  ever  received;  it  is,  how- 
ever, fairly  well  proved  by  James  H.  Wilkins,  a 
journalistic  authority  on  Mexico,  that  he  was 
captured  by  a  rebel  band  and  shot  against  a  wall 
not  far  from  Monterey.  To  quote  from  one  of  his 
own  poems,  he 

His  awful  Pursued  his  awful  humor  to  the  end; 

humor  When,  like  a  stormy  dawn,  the  crimson  broke 

From  his  white  lips,  he  smiled  and  mutely  bled, 
And  having  meanly  lived,  was  grandly  dead. 

Yet  in  spite  of  an  embittered  genius,  Bierce  was 
capable  of  sweet  and  tender  feeling,  shown  at  rare 
intervals  in  his  verse.  "Another  Way,"  "Presenti- 
ment," and  "The  Death  of  Grant"  evidence  this 
fact,  so  that  to  me  he  always  seemed  a  fine  and 
brave  spirit  whose  life  had  been  darkened  by  some 
hidden  tragedy. 

Contemporaneous  with  Bierce,  and  closely  associ- 
ated with  him,  was  Arthur  McEwen,  also  a  free- 
lance journalist,  author  of  some  admirable  sketches 


1892]  Other  ^Journalists 

of  the  human  type  known  as  "the  man  about  town/' 
and  possessed  of  a  gift  of  sarcasm  nearly  as  biting 
as  that  of  his  colleague.  Toward  the  last  the  two 
fell  out.  McEwen  then  published  a  review  of  his 
one-time  friend  so  accurately  vitriolic  that  it  was 
held  to  avenge  all  the  latter' s  many  victims. 

In  quite  a  different  journalistic  class  were  George  Fitch 
H.  Fitch  of  the  Chronicle  and  Bailey  Millard  of  the 
Examiner.  Fitch,  a  serious,  scholarly  man  of  high 
ability,  I  had  known  at  Cornell,  where  he  had  taken 
one  of  my  botany  courses.  For  many  years  city 
editor  of  the  Chronicle,  he  also  had  charge  of  its 
literary  pages;  his  book  reviews  and  general  dis- 
cussions were  always  sound,  often  inspiring. 

Genial  Bailey  Millard,  long  absent  from  the 
Coast,  returned  not  long  ago  to  edit  for  a  time  the 
Bulletin,  one  of  San  Francisco's  evening  sheets. 
When  I  first  met  him,  he  was  a  keen  and  kindly 
young  fellow,  beloved  of  all  who  came  within  the 
range  of  his  personal  acquaintance,  and  full  of  plans 
and  expedients.  Sometime  in  the  early  part  of  the  A  great 
century,  while  in  New  York  as  editor  of  Hearst's 
Cosmopolitan,  he  conceived  the  novel  idea  of  giving  a 
dinner  for  three  men  whom  he  regarded  in  some  degree 
as  sages  or  prophets  —  Edwin  Markham,  Hamlin  Gar- 
land, and  myself — with  a  stenographer  to  take  down 
the  conversation  as  it  proceeded.  But,  as  I  remember, 
not  one  of  us  said  a  single  smart  thing,  though  both 
Markham  and  Garland  had  shown  themselves  amply 
capable  of  rising  to  form.  When  the  material  was 
ready  for  the  magazine,  Hearst  ran  his  eye  over  the 
copy.  "Cut  out  that  stuff,  nobody  cares  for  it," 
was  his  comment. 

John   McNaught,    editor   of  the    San    Francisco 

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Days  of  a  Man  £1892 


Literary  Call,  was  a  serious  and  conscientious  journalist  who 
journalists  maintained  a  high  standard  for  his  paper,  and 
resigned  when  the  owners  apparently  wanted  to 
adopt  a  more  sensational  or  "  yellow  "  policy.  Jerome 
Hart  edited  with  excellent  taste  and  discrimination 
the  famous  weekly  Argonaut  founded  by  Frank 
Pixley,  an  original  and  colorful  representative  of 
the  Bret  Harte  era.  As  the  author  of  clever  stories 
and  unhackneyed  travel  sketches,  Hart  (like  several 
of  his  colleagues)  demonstrated  the  natural  relation 
between  good  journalism  and  literature. 

Among  the  women  prominent  in  this  field  was 
Millicent  Shinn,  then  editor  of  The  Overland  Monthly. 
While  welcoming  me  to  the  state  in  friendly  fashion, 
nevertheless  —  as  an  ardent  apostle  of  the  Uni- 
versity of  California,  her  Alma  Mater  —  Miss  Shinn 
kept  a  sharp  lookout  for  educational  heresies  and 
any  deviation  from  the  methods  of  Yale,  dear  to 
her  former  professors. 

A  grim          In  the  south,  General  Harrison  Gray  Otis  edited 
°ld,t          his  own  paper,  the  Los  Angeles  Times.    Grim,  ob- 

fighter  .  •    i      r  i  •  • 

stinate,  straightforward,  and  conservative,  carrying 
on  a  consistent  fight  against  organized  labor  on  the 
one  hand  and  liberalism  on  the  other,  he  stood  in  a 
class  by  himself.  A  single  incident  may  be  cited  as 
characteristic  of  the  man.  In  1911,  in  connection 
with  a  gathering  at  Riverside  for  the  promotion  of 
world  peace,  Otis  was  asked  by  Frank  Miller  (of 
whom  I  shall  presently  speak)  to  arrange  for  a  full 
report  of  my  address,  which  was  the  principal  one 
of  the  occasion.  To  this  request  he  at  once  assented, 
remarking,  however,  that  "every  man  jack  of  us  is 
opposed  to  peace  in  all  its  forms." 

Accordingly,  it  gives  me  pleasure  to  say  that  in 


1892]  Clergy  of  California 

1915  I  received  from  General  Otis  the  draft  of  a 
plan  to  ensure  permanent  peace.  This  was  sub- 
stantially identical  with  the  suggestions  made  some- 
what earlier  by  Hamilton  Holt,1  which  afterward 
formed  the  basis  of  "The  League  to  Enforce  Peace." 


Of  the  many  engaged  in  the  so-called  learned 
professions,  I  had  more  or  less  intimate  relations 
with  a  number  far  too  great  for  enumeration  here, 
and  those  whom  I  shall  mention  are  not  chosen  on 
the  basis  of  relative  merit.  For  this  is  a  personal 
narrative,  not  a  discriminating  history  of  the  in- 
tellectual growth  of  California. 

Provision  having  been  made  at  the  beginning  for 
Sunday  services  at  the  University,  we  were  for  ten 
years  largely  dependent  on  the  friendly  generosity 
of  clergymen  of  neighboring  towns.  Dr.  Horatio 
Stebbins,  the  wise  and  self-possessed  successor  of 
Starr  King  in  the  First  Unitarian  Church  of  San  Brown 
Francisco,  one  of  Mr.  Stanford's  intimate  friends 
and  a  member  of  the  original  board  of  trustees, 
occupied  our  pulpit  from  time  to  time.  Dr.  Charles 
W.  Wendte,  then  of  the  Unitarian  Church  at  Oak- 
land, an  active  and  scholarly  man,  often  spoke  for 
us.2  Dr.  Charles  R.  Brown,  the  popular  and  effec- 
tive Congregationalist  minister  of  Oakland  already 
mentioned,  came  frequently,  his  terse,  eloquent 

1  "A  League  of  Peace";  The  Independent,  early  in  1915.  See  Vol.  II,  page  665. 

2  Since  his  removal  to  Boston,  Wendte  has  been  prominent  in  the  world 
movement  of  "Free  Christianity."    This  great  international  organization  has 
for  its  basis  two  purposes:  the  establishment  of  the  individual  "right  of  inter- 
pretation" and  the  release  of  religion  from  all  relation  to  the  state  and  from 

.all  control  by  dominating  hierarchies. 

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The  Days  of  a  Man  £1892 

addresses  being  greatly  appreciated.  Furthermore, 
in  his  capacity  as  non-resident  lecturer  on  "Per- 
sonal Ethics,"  he  was  for  four  years  one  of  the 
most  vigorous  and  effective  of  all  our  teachers.  To 
Dr.  Jacob  Voorsanger,  rabbi  of  the  Temple  Emanu- 
El  in  San  Francisco,  a  man  of  unusual  mental  and 
physical  energy,  we  were  also  greatly  indebted.  His 
courses  of  lectures  on  Hebraic  literature,  as  well  as 
his  frequent  sermons,  were  of  a  high  order  of  merit. 

Another  one  of  our  early  friends  was  Dr.  Robert 
McKenzie,  pastor  of  the  First  Presbyterian  Church 
of  San  Francisco,  who  acted  as  chaplain  on  the 
opening  day  of  the  University  and  gave  us  his  loyal 
backing  as  long  as  he  remained  on  the  Coast.  His 
colleague,  Dr.  John  K.  McLean,  dean  of  the  Con- 
gregationalist  Seminary  at  Berkeley,  was  also  a 
valued  friend  and  adviser. 

Other  Of  our  many  friends  among  the  Methodists,  Dr. 

E-  R-  Dille  lent  us  continually  the  support  of  his 
moral  strength.  And,  strangely  enough,  of  those 
already  mentioned  he  is  the  only  one  still  left  in 
California.  Bishop  William  F.  Nichols  of  the 
Episcopal  Church,  however,  has  been  for  thirty 
years  our  good  friend  and  neighbor,  a  welcome  guest 
whenever  he  finds  it  possible  to  preach  before  the 
University.  From  San  Jose  came  Dr.  Wakefield, 
the  local  rector,  stately,  gentle,  well-beloved.  And 
almost  at  our  very  door  lived  Dr.  Peet,  who,  as 
soon  as  Palo  Alto  took  form,  had  charge  of  the  tiny 
All  Saints'  Church.  With  his  slight  figure,  long 
silvery  hair,  saintlike  face,  quaint  hat,  and  gracious 
ways,  he  might  have  stepped  forth  from  the  pages 
of  Jane  Austen. 

No  member  of  the  Catholic  communion  has  ever 
C466I1 


1892^  Lawyers  and  Doctors 

felt  free  to  speak  in  the  Stanford  Chapel.  This 
fact,  however,  did  not  debar  its  clergy  from  sym- 
pathy with  our  work.  Archbishop  Patrick  Reardon 
was  a  warm  friend  of  the  Stanfords,  and  my  own 
numerous  personal  relations  with  him  were  of  the 
pleasantest  kind.  A  man  of  noble  presence,  wise 
and  patient,  he  exerted  a  strong  influence  in  morals 
and  religion.  Among  many  other  activities  he  was 
the  founder  of  St.  Patrick's  Seminary,  at  Menlo 
Park,  for  the  training  of  priests. 

With  the  local  legal  group,  as  such,  our  academic 
ties  were  naturally  not  so  close  as  with  the  clergy. 
At  one  time,  however,  certain  judges  of  the  higher 
courts  held  our  fate  in  their  hands,  and  to  them  I 
shall  subsequently  refer.  Another  lawyer  whose 
acquaintance  I  made  soon  after  my  arrival  in  Cali- 
fornia is  Warren  Olney,  a  veteran  of  the  Civil  War, 
and  now  since  many  years  an  honored  member  of 
the  San  Francisco  Bar. 

As  for  the  physicians,  they  took  from  the  first  a 
generous  interest  in  the  development  of  Stanford, 
especially  in  its  scientific  departments  and  in  the 
Medical  School  which  came  as  a  natural  outgrowth. 
One  of  the  most  highly  esteemed  was  Levi  Cooper 
Lane,  an  extremely  skillful  and  unselfish  surgeon, 
the  founder  of  Cooper  Medical  College  named  for 
his  uncle,  Dr.  Elias  B.  Cooper.  Before  his  death,  The 
Dr.  Lane  arranged  to  have  the  property  of  that 
excellent  institution,  worth  upward  of  a  million, 
turned  over  to  Stanford  as  the  nucleus  of  a  new  and 
stronger  organization.  Distinguished  members  of  the 
old  Cooper  group,  and  later  of  the  Stanford  faculty, 
though  they  soon  entered  the  emeritus  list,  were 

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The  Days  of  a  Man  £1892 

Adolph  Barkan,  Joseph  O.  Hirschfelder,  and  William 
P.  Gibbons,  Jr. 

Many  others  of  the  medical  fraternity  stood  in 
close  and  friendly  relations  to  Stanford  in  its  form- 
ative years,  among  them  one  of  our  Menlo  Park 
staiiard  neighbors,  Dr.  James  H.  Stallard,  a  decidedly 
original  and  capable  English  physician  who  spent 
his  surplus  energies  in  the  enjoyment  of  fine  music 
and  a  zealous  advocacy  of  the  single  tax.  In  many 
ways  Stallard's  point  of  view  remained  distinctly 
British,  and  he  recalled  with  pride  the  fact  that  he 
had  been  physician  to  Lady  Byron. 


Sutro  Among   the    notable    citizens   of   San    Francisco 

was  Adolph  Sutro,  a  wealthy  Jewish  mine-owner 
—  originally  from  Aix-la-Chapelle  —  who  had  risen 
to  prominence  in  California  through  his  own  en- 
ergy and  foresight.  I  met  him  first  in  the  spring 
of  1892,  while  Andrew  D.  White  was  giving  his 
course  of  lectures  on  European  History  at  Stanford. 
White  had  traveled  from  the  East  with  Mr.  and 
Mrs.  Andrew  Carnegie  in  their  private  car,  and 
Mr.  Sutro  invited  him,  the  Carnegies,  and  ourselves 
to  "breakfast"  at  his  home  on  Sutro  Heights.  I 
remember  well  the  keen  play  of  wit  that  there  took 
place  among  those  three  brainy  men,  so  very  dif- 
ferent in  personality.  But  we  all  agreed  with  our 
host  in  his  main  contentions  —  that  is,  as  to  the 
value  of  scientific  knowledge  in  all  its  branches  and 
the  importance  of  libraries  for  its  increase  and  dif- 
fusion. Mr.  Sutro  was  also  deeply  interested  in 
the  beginnings  of  science  and  of  the  art  of  printing, 
C468  ] 


1892]  More  of  Our  Friends 

and   had   ransacked    Europe   for   "Incunabula"   of 
printing  and  block  engraving. 

Afterward  when  I  met  him  on  various  occasions, 
our  discussions  always  hinged  on  his  plans  for  the 
great  Sutro  Library  of  rare  books  and  scientific 
works,  later  established  by  him  in  San  Francisco, 
and  finally  presented  to  the  state  by  his  daughter, 
Dr.  Emma  Sutro  Merritt.  Unfortunately  half  of  it, 
including  most  of  the  ancient  tomes  and  ecclesias- 
tical volumes,  burned  in  the  earthquake-fire  of  1906. 

A  genuine  patriot,  in  the  sense  of  devotion  to  Valentine 
public  welfare,  was  John  J.  Valentine,  president  of 
the  Western  Union  Telegraph  Company.  One  of  his 
special  interests  lay  in  the  preservation  of  the  high 
tone  of  our  foreign  policy.  An  address  of  mine,1 
having  attracted  his  favorable  attention,  was  pub- 
lished by  him  in  booklet  form  and  distributed  far 
and  wide  as  a  tract  against  imperialism.  William  H. 
Mills,  another  valued  friend,  long  closely  associated 
with  Stanford,  was  a  man  of  high  ability,  literary  as 
well  as  financial. 

In    Los    Angeles,    Caroline    L.    Severance,    "the  A  strong 
Mother  of  Clubs"  and  center  of  a  host  of  admirers,  woman 
exerted  a  remarkable  influence  on  the  whole  com- 
munity.    Madame  Severance  was  especially  inter- 
ested in  the  various  phases  of  the  struggle  for  justice 
to  women. 

At  Pasadena  lived  General  Thaddeus  S.  C.  Lowe,  General 
founder  of  the   Lowe  Observatory.     His   life  was  Lowe 
throughout  that  of  an  active  and  persistent  inventor, 
always    with    some    large    and    usually    successful 
scheme  on  hand.     In  early  manhood  he  constructed 
balloons  for  the  study  of  atmospheric  phenomena. 

1  "Lest  We  Forget."     See  Chapter  xxiv,  page  616. 

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The  Days  of  a  Man  £1892 

As  head  of  the  Army  Balloon  System  during  the 
Civil  War,  he  rendered  distinguished  service,  after 
which  a  long  series  of  remarkable  and  varied  inven- 
tions were  produced  by  him. 

rbe  At  Riverside,  my  wife  and  I  early  found  a  warm 

Mission  personal  welcome  at  the  hands  of  Frank  Miller  of 
the  Mission  Inn,  host  par  excellence  and  lover  of  his 
kind,  who  has  long  been  a  dynamic  force  in  pro- 
moting many  forms  of  the  common  good.  And  the 
picturesque  hostelry  over  which  he  presides  with 
the  efficient  aid  of  all  the  other  members  of  his 
devoted  household,  is  to  me  the  most  charming  I 
have  ever  entered.  Its  fame,  indeed,  is  world- 
wide among  travelers.  A  tourist  whom  Miller  once 
met  at  Carlsbad,  and  to  whom  he  explained  his  quest 
for  new  ideas  for  increasing  the  attractiveness  of  his 
house,  said,  in  substance:  "You  don't  need  to  look 
farther.  In  your  own  country  you  will  find  a  hotel 
which  meets  the  requirements  better  than  any  over 
here.  It's  at  Riverside,  California." 

The  Mission  Inn  opens  its  doors  in  a  peculiarly 
personal  and  generous  way  to  all  gatherings  looking 
toward  civic  advance  and  general  human  better- 
ment. It  thus  holds  a  position  in  the  state  which 
no  other  similar  establishment  has  in  any  degree 
attempted  to  occupy.1 

1  Miller  is  locally  interested  in  the  romantic  utilization  of  Mount  Rubidoux, 
a  conical  peak  of  granite  adjoining  the  city  of  Riverside.  On  its  sharp  summit 
he  some  years  ago  installed  a  tall  cross  dedicated  to  the  memory  of  Padre  Serra, 
and  there  at  dawn,  each  Easter  morning,  is  held  an  impressive  religious  service 
in  which  the  whole  community  unites.  On  a  photograph  showing  two  distin- 
guished guests  at  the  foot  of  the  Serra  Cross,  I  wrote  the  following: 

John  Burroughs,  James  MacDonald,  tell  me  when 

Has  any  mountain  top  borne  braver  men? 

What  freak  of  friendly  fortune  lent  these  two 

Thy  consecrated  summit,  Rubidoux? 

C  470  3 


18923  Men  of  Public  Spirit 

In  Sacramento  labored  three  men  conspicuous 
for  their  breadth  of  mind  and  intelligent  interest 
in  public  affairs.  These  were  Harris  Weinstock, 
David  Lubin,  and  Albeit  Bonnheim.  When  I  mento  trio 
made  their  acquaintance,  they  represented  the  firm 
of  Weinstock,  Lubin  &  Co.,  a  great  distributing 
department  store.  Mr.  Weinstock  is  the  author  of 
an  excellent  book,  "Jesus  the  Jew"  —  an  attempt 
to  portray  Jesus  as  seen  from  the  standpoint  of  a 
cultured  Hebrew.  To  this,  at  his  request,  I  wrote 
n  introductory  note.  David  Lubin  was  deeply 
absorbed  in  the  problems  of  the  farmer,  and  ulti- 
mately developed  at  Rome,  with  the  sympathetic 
cooperation  of  Victor  Emanuel  II,  the  International 
Institute  of  Agriculture,  to  which  he  devoted  life 
and  means.  Albert  Bonnheim  I  came  to  know 
best  as  the  friend  of  struggling  students.  Through 
his  generosity  a  number  of  young  men  and  women 
at  Stanford  and  the  University  of  California  were 
quietly  helped  to  continue  their  education. 

Outstanding  figures  in  northern  California  were  The 
General  and  Mrs.  John  Bidwell  of  Chico,  owners  Eidwdls 
of  the  famous  Rancho  Chico  and  intimate  friends 
of  the  Stanfords.     Both  were,  noted  for  their  large- 
hearted  hospitality,  public  spirit,  and  devotion  to 
the  common  good.    Mrs.  Bidwell,  who  survived  her 
husband    by    many    years,    busied    herself   among 
other  activities  with  the  cause  of  temperance  and 
that  of  equal  suffrage. 

In  a  wholly  different  category,  but  too  extraor- 
dinary a  figure  to  be  easily  overlooked  in  any  dis- 
cussion of  the  period  with  which  I  am  now  deal- 
ing, was  one  "Peralta-Reavis"  -originally  James 

3 


The  Days  of  a  Man  1:1892 

Addison  Reavis  of  Missouri,  a  prosperous  and 
plausible  gentleman,  exploiter  of  the  famous  Peralta 
Claim  to  lands  in  the  Southwest.  Him  I  did  not 
meet,  however,  until  1905,  just  after  his  release 
from  the  prison  to  which  he  had  been  consigned 
by  a  relentless  Fate.  He  was  then  still  tall,  erect, 
of  military  bearing,  with  the  general  appearance  of 
a  somewhat  battered  soldier  or  perhaps  of  a  stranded 
journalist.  A  soft,  persuasive  voice,  at  once  plain- 
tive and  enthusiastic,  lent  to  his  manner  a  friendly 
and  confidential  tone.  With  him  was  a  son,  a  good- 
looking,  half-Mexican  lad  somewhere  in  the  teens. 
Reavis  said  they  were  both  present  on  the  opening 
day  at  Stanford,  on  which  occasion  "the  Governor" 
took  up  the  child,  remarking:  "You  shall  go  to 
Stanford  University."  "And  so  he  shall,"  declared 
the  father;  but  to  my  knowledge  the  youth  never 
came. 

A  monu-        "  Peralta-Reavis "   will   long   be    remembered    as 
mental       tne  author  of  the  most  gigantic,  as  well  as  the  most 

romancer  ••iiri  i         /N        'i        i        • 

artistic,  land  fraud  ever  attempted.  On  the  basis 
of  alleged  old  Spanish  grants,  he  laid  claim  to 
12,500,000  acres  (a  tract  five  times  as  large  as  the 
state  of  Connecticut)  lying  in  a  rectangle  extending 
from  beyond  Phoenix,  Arizona,  to  Silver  City,  New 
Mexico.  The  contention  was  supported  by  a  wealth 
of  false  details  of  registration  in  Madrid  and  Guada- 
lajara, and  bolstered  by  a  variety  of  circumstantial 
evidence.  In  the  latter  nothing  had  been  over- 
looked, ancestral  portraits  and  high  adventure  play- 
ing their  part  along  with  violated  documents  and 
forged  deeds. 

Some  time  before,   a   dubious  "Peralta   Claim" 
had  been  put  forward  by  Don  Miguel  Peralta  of 


1892]  Peralta-Reavis 

San  Diego,  who  insisted  on  his"  right  to  a  million 
acres  of  land  in  Arizona.  Reavis,  by  hook  and  by 
crook  (especially  by  crook),  became  possessed  of 
this  claim,  which  he  then  proceeded  to  extend  amaz- 
ingly by  developing  in  the  name  of  his  Mexican 
wife,  Sofia  Maso  y  Silva,  another  one  of  tenfold 
importance.  To  that  end  he  devised  for  her  an  The 
imposing  Peralta  lineage  reaching  back  to  the  Sar°n°f 

•  •  r  i?i       a  •   1  j  <ST\          Arizona 

imaginary  but  very  noble  bpanisn  grandee,  Don 
Miguel  Nimecio  Silva  de  Peralta  de  la  Cordoba, 
Baron  of  Arizona  and  Gentleman  of  the  King's 
Chamber,  with  access  at  all  times  to  His  Royal 
Person'1;  half  a  dozen  other  titles  were  also  appro- 
priately vouched  for  in  the  records.  It  further 
appeared  from  the  documents  presented  that  Don 
Miguel  became  owner  of  a  vast  extent  of  Mexican 
lands  through  a  royal  cedula,  or  decree,  issued  after 
his  appointment  as  Royal  Inspector  for  New  Spain 
by  Philip  V  in  1742. 

In  the  words  of  Will  S.  Tipton,  the  astute  Spanish 
scholar  who  finally  ran  him  to  earth,  Reavis 

invented  the  property,  the  royal  cedulas,  the  wills,  the  probate 
proceedings,  and  a  long  line  of  noble  ancestry.  He  brought 
into  existence  a  grandee  and  descendants  for  three  genera- 
tions, carried  them  with  all  a  novelist's  skill  through  the  vicis- 
situdes of  life  across  the  changes  of  a  century  and  a  half,  and 
came  near  securing  the  solemn  confirmation  by  government  of 
a  principality  that  never  existed  to  the  alleged  heirs  of  persons 
who  never  lived.1 

After  long  and  persistent  investigation,  legal  and 
linguistic,  by  able  experts  of  whom  Tipton  was 
the  chief,  the  whole  scheme  was  unraveled,  and 
"Peralta-Reavis,  Baron  of  Arizona,"  was  convicted 

1  See  The  Land  of  Sunsbinf,  February,  1898. 

C  473  3 


The  Days  of  a  Man  £1893 

(1895)  of  fraud  and  forgery,  and  sent  to  the  State 
Penitentiary  at  Santa  Fe.  But  the  man  has  some- 
thing of  the  poet  in  him,  and  his  work  bore  the  stamp 
of  unmistakable  genius. 

.  6 

During  the  first  decade  of  Stanford  University, 
guests  Easterners  still  looked  upon  California  as  very 
remote.  Nevertheless,  other  welcome  visitors  fol- 
lowed Mr.  White,  among  the  earliest  of  them  Presi- 
dent Eliot  of  Harvard,  serene,  clear-eyed,  and 
fearless,  one  of  the  few  university  executives  able 
to  look  past  the  next  generation  into  the  long  future. 
John  Fiske,  philosopher  and  historian,  charmed  us 
by  his  broad  views  of  life  and  human  affairs,  as 
well  as  by  his  friendly  interest  in  the  work  of  the 
infant  institution.  And  Prince  Serge  Wolkonsky  of 
St.  Petersburg,  a  brilliant  historical  scholar,  twice 
addressed  the  university  audience  on  subjects  con- 
nected with  his  American  experiences. 

James  Whitcomb  Riley,  my  old  friend,  read  to  us  in 
delicious  fashion  a  number  of  his  Hoosier  poems,  thus 
bringing  down  upon  himself  the  wrath  of  Ambrose 
Bierce.1  Frederick  Warde,  the  Shakespearian  actor, 
"Ian  Maclaren,"  and  Ernest  Thompson  Seton  also 
spoke,  each  in  his  own  tongue. 

Miss  Eleanor  Calhoun,  a  talented  young  woman 
of  unusual  beauty,  grandniece  of  the  famous  politi- 
cal leader,  delighted  us  with  a  reading  in  French 
from  certain  roles  she  had  played  in  Paris  at  the 
Comedie  fran$aise.  Born  and  bred  in  the  Tehachapi, 
a  picturesque  though  barren  mountain  upland  of 

1  See  page  461. 

C  474  3 


1893]  Early  Visitors 

Southern  California,  she  there  developed  under  the  An 
tutelage  of  her  gifted  mother  a  power  of  charming 
impersonation,  with  the  rare  traits  of  voice  and 
talent  shared  in  a  degree  also  by  her  three  sisters. 
When  we  made  her  acquaintance  she  was,  I  believe, 
the  only  English-speaking  actress  who  had  ever 
studied  at  the  Conservatoire  and  appeared  with  a 
French  company  on  the  Comedie  stage,  the  most 
exacting  in  the  world.  It  was  in  London,  however, 
that  she  achieved  theatrical  success  and  after- 
ward made  a  romantic  marriage  with  the  brilliant 
expatriated  Serb,  Bouk  Lazarovich-Hrebelianovich, 
ranking  lineal  descendant  of  the  last  Serbian  em- 
peror, Tsacr  Lazar  Hrebelianovich,  who  was  over- 
thrown by  the  Turks  in  1389  on  the  famous  field 
of  Kossovo,  and  promptly  beheaded  by  them. 

Lazarovich  and  his  wife  are  joint  authors  of  an 
elaborate  and  interesting  work  entitled  "The  Ser- 
vian People."  In  "Pleasures  and  Palaces,"  Madame 
Lazarovich  has  written  charmingly  of  her  early 
experiences. 

In  the  fall  of  1894  came  Professor  Karl  Lam- 
precht,  the  noted  historical  scholar,  who  was  mak- 
ing an  extended  American  tour.  But  I  felt  that  he 
had  utterly  failed  to  grasp  the  spirit  and  tendencies 
of  our  democracy.  In  its  individualism  and  free- 
dom from  official  discipline  this  diverges  widely 
from  Bismarckian  ideals,  the  subservience  of  the 
individual  to  the  nation,  which  to  him  represented 
the  acme  of  social  development.  Afterward  I  had 
reason  to  believe  that  his  attitude  was  largely  de- 
termined by  too  great  reliance  on  the  point  of  view 
of  certain  unassimilated  "German-Americans."  His 
diary,  "Americana,"  published  in  1906,  contains 

C4753 


marckian 
critic 


The  Days  of  a  Man  £1893 

many  curious  observations.  Commenting  on  the 
elemental  character  of  American  society,  our  "ani- 
mal relation  to  nature,"  he  says: 

The  American  lives  with  nature  like  an  animal;  he  delights 
in  wasting  time  with  her;  he  loves  her  as  well  as  in  him  lies, 
and  lacking  Utterly  the  pantheistic  conception  which  looks 
upon  nature  as  a  whole  and  as  the  highest  kind  of  artistic  work. 
...  He  finds  especial  joy  in  camping  out,  in  the  views  from 
a  cabin,  the  glint  of  the  sun  on  the  ocean,  the  solemnity  of  the 
forests,  the  loneliness  of  the  prairies,  and  the  rocky  solitude  of 
the  great  mountains. 

Americans  of  German  descent  are  also  taken  to 
tas^  ^v  t"ie  writer  f°r  lapsing  into  the  same  crude, 
grace         elemental  ways,  for  their  lack  of  self-assertion,  and 
their 

falling  into  the  habits  of  folk  of  British  origin,  from  whom  in  a 
generation  or  two  they  become  indistinguishable,  developing 
nothing  of  the  political  views  which  have  been  growing  stronger 
and  stronger  in  Germany  since  1870. 

Our  Westerners  he  compares  to  the  peasantry 
of  the  Middle  Ages,  and  quotes  from  Herndon's 
"Life  of  Lincoln"  to  the  effect  that  the  general 
mental  and  moral  conditions  prevailing  on  the 
prairies  of  Illinois  in  the  first  half  of  the  last  century 
were  more  like  those  surrounding r  the  English 
peasants  in  Richard  Cceur-de-Lion's  day  than  like 
any  recent  phase: 

"Primi-  Amid  the  relaxed  experience  of  Western  life  the  lower  sort 

tvoe  Of  American  has  tended  to  revert  toward  the  social  state  an- 

ans  cestrally  extinct  before  America  was  discovered. 

From  this  sad  condition  German  immigration,  in 
his  judgment,  should  have  served  to  "redeem" 

C4763 


1896]  The  Cross  of  Gold 

the  American  people;  in  that,  however,  it  had 
miserably  failed,  the  leaven  of  German  culture 
being  lost  in  the  lump. 

In    1896  William  J.    Bryan,   then   Congressman  Our 
from   Nebraska,   visited   the   university   and   gave  greate? 

i  r      i  11  i        preacher 

an  address  on  the  menace  or  the  gold  monopoly. 
This  was  substantially  identical  with  his  "cross 
of  gold"  speech  which  soon  enthralled  the  Demo- 
cratic Convention  of  the  same  year  and  led  to  his 
first  nomination  for  the  presidency.  Endowed  with 
a  rich,  full,  organ-like  voice,-  he  handled  his  periods 
in  eloquent  fashion.  But  we  were  not  impressed 
with  the  profundity  of  the  discourse,  though  we 
recognized  its  generous  human  feeling  and  the 
orator's  skill  in  touching  the  emotions  of  the  com- 
mon man.  Many  years  of  subsequent  acquaintance 
have  not  materially  changed  my  opinion  of  him  as 
a  moral  exhorter  of  high  order,  in  some  respects 
the  greatest  of  American  preachers.  For  to  an  in- 
creasing degree  his  energies  have  seemed  to  turn 
from  politics  toward  social  betterment. 


C4773 


CHAPTER  TWENTY 


Death  of 

the 

founder 


Southern 
Pacific 


IN  June,  1893,  I  went  with  Mrs.  Jordan  to  Sisson 
at  the  foot  of  Mount  Shasta,  intending  to  spend 
there  a  month's  vacation.  But  one  morning  when 
I  had  climbed  to  snow  line  on  the  mountain,  I 
was  overtaken  by  an  Indian  on  horseback  bearing 
a  telegram  which  announced  the  sudden  death  of 
Mr.  Stanford.  Hurrying  home  full  of  distress  for 
Mrs.  Stanford  in  her  grief,  and  saddened  by  a  sense 
of  personal  loss,  we  soon  discovered  that  the  whole 
face  of  things  was  changed  at  the  University  —  and 
this  through  no  fault  of  the  founders  or  of  the  educa- 
tional staff. 

Apoplexy  had  been  the  immediate  cause  of  Mr. 
Stanford's  death.  Behind  that,  however,  lay  no 
doubt  his  apprehension  of  the  tremendous  financial 
strain  which  he  realized  would  fall  upon  him,  for 
a  special  reason,  in  the  panic  he  saw  approaching; 
as  to  this  particular  matter  my  information  was 
derived  solely  from  Stanford  himself. 

At  that  time  the  entire  Southern  Pacific  corpora- 
tion (with  which  the  original  Central  Pacific  had 
been  merged)  was  held  by  the  estates  of  the  four 
builders,  Leland  Stanford,  Collis  P.  Huntington, 
Mark  Hopkins,  and  Charles  Crocker -^- the  last 
two  being  already  deceased,  and  Huntington  hav- 
ing with  characteristic  adroitness  secured  a  little 
more  than  one  fourth  of  the  stock  and  then  ousted 
Stanford  from  the  presidency,  which  he  himself 
assumed.  Meanwhile,  relying  on  Huntington's 
promise  that  his  (Stanford's)  share  of  the  earnings 


1893]  Settling  the  Estate 

still  undivided  —  a  sum  upward  of  three  millions 
—  would  be  shortly  turned  over  in  full,  Stanford 
borrowed  about  two  millions  at  the  bank  to  cover 
expenses  incurred  in  the  building  and  maintenance 
of  the  University.  Shortly  before  the  latter' s  death,  An 
however,  Huntington  notified  him  that  the  rail-  un/oreseen 

,  ,  ,  &         .  ,  ....       dilemma 

road  could  not  pay  the  promised  sum,  it  being,  in 
fact,  already  loaned  out!  The  only  explanation  of 
this  apparent  breach  of  faith  was  that  "it  helps 
the  standing  of  a  railroad  company  to  be  known  to 
have  money  at  interest. " 

[Huntington,  as  is  well  known,  maintained  a  rigid 
code  of  ethics  of  his  own  framing.  It  was,  how- 
ever, a  code  of  power,  currently  described  about 
as  follows:  "Whatever  is  not  nailed  down  is  mine. 
Whatever  I  can  pry  loose  is  not  nailed  down."] 

Stanford  now  faced  a  crisis  in  his  relations  to  the 
bank,  a  matter  that  preyed  upon  his  mind  and  af- 
fected his  health.  Death  threw  his  estate  into  the  in  the 
jurisdiction  of  the  Probate  Court,  a  necessary  pro-  £ 
cedure  protecting  the  property  from  attack  by  in- 
dividual creditors,  but  at  the  same  time  debarring 
the  University,  as  such,  from  participating  in  the 
receipts  until  all  indebtedness  could  be  canceled. 
And  while  as  a  "going  concern"  the  liabilities  of 
the  Stanford  estate  (borrowings  and  legacies  — 
about  eight  millions  in  all)  were  not  inordinate,  as 
property  to  be  settled  with  a  view  to  retiring  from 
business,  its  condition  was  desperate,  as  will  later 
appear.  And  so  began  a  long  struggle  to  protect  it, 
clear  it  of  debt,  and  make  it  secure  as  the  university 
endowment.  This  effort  lasted  for  six  years,  mean- 
while testing  the  devotion  and  determination  of 
the  surviving  founder  to  an  almost  incredible  ex- 

C4793 


The  Days  of  a  Man  £1893 

tent.  The  strength,  of  character  then  revealed  by 
Mrs.  Stanford  more  .than  justified  the  confidence 
reposed  in  her  by  her  husband.  But  of  that  much 
more  in  due  time. 

Mr.  Stanford's  funeral  was  attended  by  a  great 
fun/r°aid'S  concourse  of  people,  for  as  man  and  as  friend  he 
was  held  in  the  highest  esteem.  Conspicuous  among 
those  present  were  the  employees  of  the  railway 
company,  who  felt  for  him  a  genuine  reverence  and 
affection.  The  service  was  conducted  by  Dr. 
Horatio  Stebbins,  whose  stately  discourse  ended 
with  words  memorable  for  their  truth  and  justice: 

Bearers,  men  of  iron  hands  and  iron  hearts,  gentle  down 
your  strength  a  little  as  ye  bear  his  body  forth  —  'tis  a  man  ye 
bear  —  and  lay  it  safely  in  its  last  strong  resting  place. 


His  early        As  Leland  Stanford's  idealism  has  concerned  so 
Hf'  large  a  part  of  my  own  life,  I  shall  here  diverge  to 

touch  upon  some  of  the  salient  points  in  his  char- 
acter and  history.  He  was  born  in  Watervliet, 
Albany  County,  New  York,  on  March  9,  1824, 
and  died  at  Palo  Alto,  June  21,  1893.  His  early 
education  he  received  at  the  well-known  Cazenovia 
Academy.  Having  afterward  finished  his  prepara- 
tion for  the  profession  of  law,  on  September  30,  1850, 
he  married  Jane,  daughter  of  Dyer  Lathrop,  a 
business  man  of  Albany,  and  settled  at  Port  Wash- 
ington, Wisconsin.  There,  however,  he  soon  lost 
all  his  belongings  by  fire,  upon  which  he  decided  to 
try  his  fortunes  in  California  (whither  he  went  by 
the  old  overland  route),  while  Mrs.  Stanford,  re- 
turning to  her  parents'  home,  awaited  a  favorable 
opportunity  to  rejoin  him. 

C  480  ] 


LELAND  STANFORD,  ABOUT  1890 


1893]  Public  Services 

Arrived   in   California   in    1852,    Stanford's   first  General 
venture  was  the  establishment  of  a  general  mer-  merchant 
chandise  store  at  Michigan  Bluff,  a  mining  camp  on 
the  American  River.     Thence  he  moved  (1856)  to 
Sacramento,  the  great  distributing  point  of  the  region, 
where  he  resumed  the  practice  of  law.     Becoming 
soon  a  prominent  citizen,  he  was  chosen  as  a  dele- 
gate  from   California   to  the   Chicago   Convention 
which  nominated  Lincoln,  whereupon,  having  pros- 
pered in  business,  he  planned  to  return  and  settle 
permanently   in   the    East.      But   his   selection   as 
Republican  nominee  for  the  governorship  of  Cali- 
fornia—  and  subsequent  election  to  that  office  — 
kept  him  a  resident  in  the  state  of  which  he  was  for 
a  generation  the   most   conspicuous   public  figure. 
As  "war  governor"  during  the  critical  period  from  War 
1861  to  1863,  he  immediately  took  his  stand  for  iQ<oernor 
the  Union  and,  ably  seconded  by  Starr  King,  was  a 
decisive  force  in  holding  California  against  secession. 
He  thus  became  one  of  Lincoln's  trusted  associates. 

Another  noteworthy  contribution  to  both  state  Railway 
and  nation  was  the  earnest  advocacy  —  in  his  bmlder 
inaugural  address,  which  powerfully  influenced  the 
whole  country  —  of  a  transcontinental  railway  con- 
necting California  with  the  rest  of  the  Union.  For 
this  purpose  the  national  government,  alive  to  the 
pressing  need,  first  made  offers  of  large  grants  of 
land  along  the  proposed  line,  and  subsequently 
loans  of  money  for  the  completion  of  the  scheme. 
The  system  was  then  developed  in  two  parts, 
by  separate  corporations  —  the  Union  Pacific  from 
Omaha  to  Utah,  and  the  Central  Pacific,  undertaken 
by  Stanford  and  his  partners,  eastward  from  Sac- 
ramento to  Utah,  Ogden  being  ultimately  made 


The  Days  of  a  Man  £1893 

the   point  of  division.     Many  obstructions,   politi- 
cal and  financial,  were  from  the  outset  encountered 
by  both  companies,1  but  the  transcontinental  line 
was  at  last  finished  in  May,  1869.     A  picturesque 
rhe  last      incident,  the  driving  of  a  golden  spike  at  Promon- 
spike         tory,    the   original   junction,    celebrated   the   great 
achievement.2 

From  the  generous  earnings  and  the  sale  of  bonds 
(not  stocks)  of  the  Central  Pacific,  Stanford  and  his 
associates  afterward  built  the  Southern  Pacific 
from  New  Orleans  to  San  Francisco  and  Portland. 
The  Central  Pacific  was  then  leased  to  the  Southern 
Pacific  and  virtually  absorbed  by  it,  the  ownership 
of  the  two  remaining  the  same. 

United  In  1885,  toward  the  close  of  his  active  business 

career?  Mr.  Stanford  returned  to  political  life  as 
United  States  Senator  from  California;  in  this 
capacity  he  was  still  serving  at  the  time  of  his  death. 
At  Washington  his  activities  were  characterized 
by  an  interest  in  general  agricultural  welfare  and  a 
wholesome  degree  of  independence  in  party  affairs, 

1  One  capitalist  who  was  invited  to  join  Stanford  in  the  venture  told  me 
that  he  himself  "would  not  have  touched  it  with  a  ten-foot  pole,"  so  slight 
seemed  the  chances  of  success.    As  a  matter  of  fact,  the  promoters  were  obliged 
at  times  to  pay  12  per  cent  monthly  interest. 

2  Mr.  Charles  B.  Turrell,  an  early  agent  of  the  Central  Pacific,  explains 
that  none  of  the  four   builders    had   at  the  outset  any  thought  of  carrying 
through  alone  the  great  work  undertaken  by  them.      As  citizens  of  Sacramento, 
interested  in  the  welfare  of  town  and  state,  they  proposed   merely  to  start 
the  project,  hoping  that  some  wealthier  corporation  would  complete  it.     But 
as  time  went  on,  they  found  that  they  themselves  must  cross  the  Sierra  to 
meet  the  Union  Pacific  or  lose  all  they  had  put  in.     Checked  from  time  to 
time  in  the  foothills  about  Dutch  Flat  by  lack  of  resources,  "the  Dutch  Flat 
Swindle,"  as  it  was  often  derisively  called,  struggled  on  month  after  month. 
Finally,  under  the  direction  of  Theodore  Judah,  a  highly  competent  engineer, 
the  work  was  carried  to  triumphant  completion.     One  cause  of  success  lay 
in  the  fact  that  whatever  else  suffered  the  workmen  were  regularly  paid,  even 
though  at  times  the  families  of  the  partners  may  have  had  to  do  without 
ordinary  comforts  of  life,  not  to  speak  of  luxuries. 

C  482  3 


1893]  Stanford* s  Personality 

especially  in  postponing  and  thus  defeating  the  ill- 
considered  and  exasperating  Lodge  "Force  Bill"  of 
1890,  which  provided  for  Federal  control  of  elec- 
tions in  the  Southern  states. 

Leland  Stanford's  far-reaching  influence  never 
rested  wholly  or  even  mainly  on  wealth.  Indeed, 
during  his  early  career  he  was  far  from  affluent,  and 
a  fundamental  simplicity  of  life  kept  him  always 
in  touch  with  the  people.  In  person  of  massive 
build,  and  rather  slow-spoken  though  extremely 
direct  and  earnest,  he  had  a  considerable  fund  of 
dry  humor,  and  a  rarely  beautiful  smile  which  il- 
lumined his  otherwise  impassive  face.  Broad- 
minded  and  long-headed,  he  was  a  keen  but  sym- 
pathetic and  benevolent  observer  of  human  nature. 
I  never  heard  him  speak  in  bitter  terms  of  any 
opponent.  His  kindness  of  heart  was  naturally  Kindness 
sometimes  imposed  upon  by  political  and  other  °fheart 
parasites;  yet  even  in  these  matters  he  was  seldom 
deceived,  being  able  to  penetrate  the  various  masks 
with  which  ambitious  impecuniosity  tries  to  dis- 
guise itself.  In  the  words  of  his  secretary,  Herbert 
C.  Nash,  "he  was  active  when  other  men  were  idle; 
he  was  generous  when  other  men  were  grasping; 
he  was  lofty  when  other  men  were  base." 

Caring  nothing  for  creed  or  ceremony,  he  had  Religious 
nevertheless  a  deeply  religious  nature.    To  him,  the  amtudc 
fundamentals   in   religion   constituted   the   basis   of 
character.    He  recognized  certain  emotional  values, 
however,  and  his  theological  position,  the  result  of    t 
clear  thinking  combined  with  warm  feeling,  might 
have  been  partially  defined  as  "Unitarian  Metho- 
dist."   His  conception  of  the  goodness  of  God,  the 
measure  of  divine  bounty,  he  put  into  the  form  of 

C483  3 


The  Days  of  a  Man  £1893 

an  epigram  which,  with  his  approval,  we  placed  on 
the  title  page  of  the  University  Register: 

The  benevolence  of  the  Creator  toward  man  on  earth,  and 
the  possibilities  of  humanity,  are  one  and  the  same. 

Afterward,  a  sentence  in  one  of  my  early  addresses, 
"A  generous  education  is  the  birthright  of  every 
man  and  woman  in  America,"  caught  his  attention, 
and  he  asked  to  have  that  appear  with  the  other. 
After  his  death,  Mrs.  Stanford  wrote: 

If  a  firm  belief  in  a  beneficent  Creator,  a  profound  admira- 
tion for  Jesus  of  Nazareth  and  His  teachings,  and  the  certainty 
of  a  personal  life  hereafter,  constitute  religion,  then  Leland 
Stanford  was  a  religious  man.  The  narrow  walls  of  a  creed 
could  not  confine  him;  therefore  he  was  not  a  professed  mem- 
ber of  any  church,  for  in  each  confession  of  faith  he  found  some- 
thing to  which  he  could  not  subscribe.  But  for  the  principles  of 
religion  he  had  a  profound  veneration;  in  his  heart  were  the  true 
sentiments  of  Christianity,  and  he  often  said  that  in  his  opinion 
the  Golden  Rule  was  the  corner  stone  of  all  religion. 

Freedom         As  a  natural  outcome  of  this  attitude  he  provided 
from  en-     m  tjie  endowment  grant  that  the  University  was  to 

tanglements    ,        r  r  n  i  i  M  t 

of  church     be  free  from  all  ecclesiastic  ties,  while  at  the  same 
or  party      time  it  should  teach  the  basic  principles  of  religion 
and  morality. 

In  the  document  he  also  directed  that  it  should 
be  kept  free  from  political  as  well  as  sectarian  en- 
tanglements.1 

In  other  regards,  the  grant  concerns  only  educa- 

1  The  two  provisions  just  noted  were  later  more  explicitly  stated  by  Mrs. 
Stanford: 

"The  University  must  be  forever  maintained  upon  a  strictly  non-partisan 
and  non-sectarian  basis.  It  must  never  become  an  instrument  in  the  hands 
of  any  political  party  or  any  religious  sect  or  organization.  .  .  .  The  moral  and 
religious  development  of  the  University  will  be  better  accomplished  if  utterly 
free  from  all  denominational  alliances,  however  slight  the  bond  may  be. ... 

£484:1 


18933    Stanford* s  Educational  Philosophy 

tion,  pure  and  simple,  without  hampering  clauses. 
His  broad  point  of  view  was  expressed  as  follows: 

We  hope  that  this  institution  will  endure  through  long 
ages.  Provisions  regarding  details  of  management,  however 
wise  they  may  be  at  present,  might  prove  to  be  mischievous 
under  conditions  which  may  arise  in  the  future. 

Of  philosophical  discussions,  particularly  as  re- 
lated to  education,  he  was  especially  fond.  In  the 
two  years  preceding  his  death  we  spent  many  eve- 
nings discussing  education  in  general  and  the  Uni- 
versity's relation  to  its  students  and  to  the  public 
at  large.  His  educational  ideals,  largely  drawn  from 
practical  experience,  were  also  in  part  a  reflex  of 
the  views  of  certain  friends,  especially  Agassiz, 
White,  and  Oilman.  A  conception  of  education  as  Training 
"training  for  usefulness  in  life"  was  his  central  f°r , 

.  ,  T»  i  •  r   i  i  usefulness 

idea.  But  to  him  usefulness  meant  not  only  mate-  inii/e 
rial  efficiency,  but  intellectual  and  spiritual  help- 
fulness also.  On  the  influence  of  the  teacher  as  a 
moral  force  he  laid  great  stress.  His  primary  con- 
cepts, with  all  of  which  I  was  in  full  sympathy, 
involved  individualism  in  education,  early  choice 
of  profession,  and  broad-based  specialization  along 
some  particular  line.  From  Agassiz  he  had  derived 
a  realizing  sense  of  the  impelling  force  of  man's 
intellectual  needs  —  "that  hunger  and  thirst  after 
truth  that  only  the  destitute  student  knows/' 

No  profession  of  religious  faith  or  belief  shall  be  exacted  of  any  one  for  any 
purpose." 

Again,  on  October  3,  1902,  in  an  address  to  the  permanent  board  of  trus- 
tees that  day  organized,  she  further  said: 

"Unless  it  maintains  a  strictly  non-partisan  attitude  upon  all  political 
questions,  this  institution  with  its  large  resources  might  well  become  a  public 
menace  and  forfeit  all  right  to  the  special  consideration  it  has  received  from 
the  hands  of  members  of  all  parties." 


The  Days  of  a  Man  £1893 

"Man's  physical  wants  are  slight,"  he  often  said, 
"but  his  intellectual  needs  are  bounded  only  by 
his  capacity." 

The  value  of  the  study  of  Political  Science  as  a 
remedy  for  defects  of  government  was  clearly  seen 
by  him: 

All  governments  are  governments  of  public  opinion,  and  in 
the  long  run  every  people  is  as  well  governed  as  it  deserves. 
.  .  .  Legislation  has  not,  as  a  rule,  been  against  the  people, 
but  it  has  not  done  the  good  that  it  might.  .  .  .  No  greater 
blow  can  be  struck  at  labor  than  that  which  renders  its  products 
insecure. 

Value  of  Voluntary  cooperation  seemed  to  him  a  great 
force  for  good.  Laying  the  corner  stone  of  the  Inner 
Quadrangle,  he  said: 

Out  of  these  suggestions  grows  the  consideration  of  the 
great  advantages,  especially  to  the  laboring  man,  of  coopera- 
tion, by  which  each  individual  has  the  benefit  of  the  intel- 
lectual and  physical  forces  of  his  associates.  It  is  by  the  in- 
telligent application  of  these  principles  that  there  will  be  found 
the  greatest  lever  to  elevate  the  mass  of  humanity,  and  laws 
should  be  formed  to  protect  and  develop  cooperative  associa- 
tions. .  .  .  They  will  accomplish  all  that  is  sought  to  be 
secured  by  labor  leagues,  trades  unions,  and  other  federations 
of  workmen,  and  will  be  free  from  the  objection  of  even  im- 
pliedly  attempting  to  take  the  unauthorized  or  wrongful 
control  of  the  property,  capital,  or  time  of  others. 

One  result  of  voluntary  cooperation,  he  thought, 
would  be  the  development  of  a  spirit  of  loyalty  as 
a  precious  asset  of  the  laboring  man  in  any  grade, 
in  any  field;  for  no  one  can  do  a  greater  injury  to 
the  cause  of  labor  than  to  take  loyalty  out  of  the 
category  of  active  virtues. 

Waste  of        The  great  economic  waste  in  labor  often  engaged 
labor         his  attention,  and  he  found  its  remedy  in  education: 

n  4863 


1893]  Waste  of  Militarism 

Once  the  great  struggle  of  labor  was  to  supply  the  neces- 
sities of  life;  now,  but  a  small  portion  of  our  people  are  so 
engaged.  Food,  clothing,  and  shelter  are  common  in  our  coun- 
try to  every  provident  person,  excepting,  of  course,  in  oc- 
casional accidental  cases.  The  great  demand  for  labor  is  to 
supply  what  may  be  termed  intellectual  wants,  to  which  there 
is  no  limit  except  that  of  intelligence  to  conceive.  If  all  the 
relations  and  obligations  of  man  were  properly  understood,  it 
would  not  be  necessary  for  people  to  make  a  burden  of  labor.  To 
The  great  masses  of  the  toilers  are  now  compelled  to  perform  dignify 
such  an  amount  of  labor  as  makes  life  often  wearisome.  An  labor 
intelligent  system  of  education  would  correct  this  inequality. 
It  would  make  the  humblest  laborer's  work  more  valuable,  it 
would  increase  both  the  demand  and  supply  for  skilled  labor, 
and  reduce  the  number  of  the  non-producing  class.  It  would 
dignify  labor,  and  ultimately  would  go  far  to  wipe  out  the 
mere  distinctions  of  wealth  and  ancestry.  It  would  achieve 
a  bloodless  revolution  and  establish  a  republic  of  industry, 
merit,  and  learning. 

How  near  to  that  state  we  may  be,  or  how  far  from  it,  we 
cannot  tell.  It  seems  very  far  when  we  contemplate  the  great 
standing  armies  of  Europe,  where  over  five  millions  of  men 
(or  about  one  for  every  twelve  adult  males)  are  marching 
about  with  guns  on  their  shoulders  to  preserve  the  peace  of 
nations,  while  hovering  near  them  is  an  innumerable  force  of 
police  to  preserve  the  peace  of  individuals;  but  when  we  re- 
member the  possibilities  of  civilization  and  the  power  of  educa- 
tion, we  can  foresee  a  time  when  these  soldiers  and  policemen 
shall  be  changed  to  useful  producing  citizens,  engaged  in  lift- 
ing the  burdens  of  the  people  instead  of  increasing  them. 
And  yet,  extravagant  as  are  the  nations  of  Europe  in  standing 
armies  and  preparations  for  war,  their  extravagance  in  the 
waste  of  labor  is  still  greater.  Education,  by  teaching  the 
intelligent  use  of  machinery,  is  the  only  remedy  for  such 
waste. 

Mr.  Stanford  further  held  that  higher  education  An  open 
should  not  be  limited  to  the  chosen  few,  as  it  prac-  f^to. 

•      11        •       •        T-  tiii  education 

tically   is  in   Europe  —  there   should   be   an   open 

C4873 


The  Days  of  a  Man  1:1893 

road  from  kindergarten  to  university.  A  friend 
once  having  argued  that  there  was  already  "too 
much  education"  and  that  to  increase  it  further  was 
simply  to  swell  the  volume  of  unrest,  he  replied  as 
follows: 

I  insisted  that  there  cannot  be  too  much  education  any 
more  than  too  much  health  or  intelligence.  Do  you  happen 
to  know  any  man  who  has  been  too  well  educated?  Where 
does  he  live?  What  is  his  address?  If  you  cannot  find  such  a 
man,  you  cannot  speak  of  overeducation. 

In  directing  that  in  the  new  institution  applied 
science,  pure  science,  and  the  humanities  should  be 
equally  fostered,  he  did  not  forget  that  knowledge 
itself  must  precede  any  use  made  of  it,  applied 
science  being  in  a  sense  a  by-product.  He  further 
insisted  that  "machinery  is  not  a  mere  labor-saving 
device  —  but  labor-aiding,  adding  to  the  value  of 
men  by  increasing  their  efficiency." 

Concerning  the  faculty  he  wrote: 

Need  of  In  order  that  the  president  may  have  the  assistance  of  a 

competent  competent  staff  of  professors,  we  have  provided  that  the  best 
teachers  talent  obtainable  shall  be  procured  and  that  liberal  compensa- 
tion shall  always  be  offered.  .  .  .  Ample  endowment  may 
have  been  provided,  intelligent  management  may  secure  large 
incomes,  students  may  present  themselves  in  numbers,  but  in 
the  end  the  faculty  makes  or  mars  a  university. 

That  the  institution  would  in  time  attract  great 
numbers  Stanford  took  as  a  matter  of  course,  al- 
though he  found,  in  California  or  elsewhere,  few 
who  shared  his  optimism.     But  he  was  never  de- 
Success      ceived  by  the  cheap  test  of  popularity.    For  he  knew 
"measured    tnat  a  ^ew  nundred  nicn,  well  trained,  would  count 
by  for  more  than  as  many  thousands  hurried  in  droves 

numbers     over  a  ready-made  curriculum.     So  it  was  agreed 

C4883 


1893]  Intimate  Sayings 

that  a  large  registration  should  never  be  our  goal. 
And  he  further  made  the  practical  request  that  not 
one  dollar  should  be  spent  in  advertising,  directly 
or  indirectly. 

That  women  should  be  educated'  as  thoroughly  Equal 
as  their  brothers  was  an  axiom  to  him;  coeducation 
was  thus  taken  for  granted.    To  quote  from  the  ar- 
ticles of  endowment: 

We  have  provided  that  the  education  of  the  sexes  shall  be 
equal  —  deeming  it  of  special  importance  that  those  who  are 
to  be  mothers  of  the  future  generation  shall  be  fitted  to  mold 
and  direct  the  infantile  mind  at  its  most  critical  period. 

Beauty  and  fitness  were  to  him  vital  elements 
in  education;  "nothing  is  unimportant  in  the  life 
of  man."  For  these  reasons  he  laid  special  stress 
on  the  physical  charms  of  Palo  Alto.  The  day 
before  his  death  he  said: 

I  learn  every  year  more  and  more  to  love  the  landscape, 
and  this  the  poorest  man  in  California  can  enjoy  as  well  as  the 
richest. 

From  time  to  time  I  jotted  down  some  of  his 
intimate  sayings: 

If  it  rained  twenty-dollar  gold  pieces  until  noon  every  day,  Increase 
at  night  there  would  be  some  men  begging  for  their  suppers,  of 

I  would  have  this  institution  help  to  fit  men  and  women  for 
usefulness  in  life  by  increasing  the  individual  power  of  pro- 
duction. There  can  be  no  limit  to  education  till  we  reach  the 
limit  to  the  power  of  production,  the  power  to  use  the  forces 
of  nature.  Every  man  ought  to  be  taught  to  live  and  to  work 
to  the  best  advantage  and  to  have  an  intelligent  idea  of  the 
thoughts  of  the  day. 

Growth  of  civilization  goes  with  increase  of  cooperation. 

In  this  last  connection  he  often  referred  to  a 
luncheon  he  had  once  eaten  at  Humboldt,  Nevada, 

[4893 


The  Days  of  a  Man  £1893 

an  oasis  in  the  desert  west  of  the  Great  Salt  Lake, 
where  for  a  single  meal  the  resources  of  many  coun- 
tries had  been  drawn  upon. 

I  believe  no  one  in  California  has  been  made  poorer  because 
I  have  lived  in  the  state. 

Value  of  A  man  on  a  high  salary,  or  occupying  an  important  place, 

time  should  not  spend  his  time  doing  things  some  one  else  could  be 

employed  to  do.  A  college  president  or  a  railroad  president 
should  not  be  a  mere  clerk.  Doing  one's  own  writing  is  a 
great  waste  of  time.  I  want  you  as  president  to  do  nothing 
which  you  can  turn  over  to  some  one  else  who  can  do  it  just 
as  well. 

We  may  always  advance  toward  the  infinite. 

I  have  dealt  with  the  man  as  I  knew  him  best, 
but  before  closing  this  tribute,  I  should  speak  of  a 
favorite  idea  advocated  by  him  in  Congress  — 
namely,  a  plan  to  make  farming  values  fluid  by 
Farm  loan  direct  governmental  assistance.  In  his  view  the 
project  Government  should  furnish  loans  at  a  low  rate  of 
interest  on  farming  properties.  The  fact  that  these 
would  themselves  afford  ample  security  for  paper 
money,  issued  for  the  special  purpose,  would,  he 
thought,  tend  to  currency  flexibility,  not  (as  was 
charged)  to  inflation.  He  often  talked  to  me  about 
the  scheme,  going  over  his  argument  in  detail. 
He  felt  that  the  farmer  did  not  get  due  considera- 
tion from  Washington,  and  that  such  a  measure 
would  be  merely  a  matter  of  simple  justice. 

It  met  with  very  little  Congressional  favor,  how- 
ever, although  the  violent  panics  of  1877  and  1893, 
with  the  minor  ones  intervening,  indicated  a  serious 
lack  in  our  monetary  system.  And  early  in  the 
Wilson  administration  a  similar  plan  was  adopted 
in  the  form  of  the  Farmers'  Loan  Act. 

C  490  3 


On  the  North  Fork 


In  October,  1893,  I  had  occasion  to  cross  the  toll 
bridge  over  the  forks  of  the  American  River  in 
Placer  County,  and  then  talked  with  the  keeper,  who 
had  known  Mr.  Stanford  at  Michigan  Bluff.  His 
remarks  I  that  day  recorded  in  the  following  lines: 

ON  THE  NORTH  FORK 
(THE  KEEPER  OF  THE  TOLLGATE  SPEAKS) 

Well,  yes,  I  knew  him;  forty  years  ago, 
Or  maybe  thirty-five,  he  lived  up  here, 
Up  at  the  bluff  above  the  old  North  Fork  — 
Michigan  Bluff,  we  called  it  in  those  days; 
He  kept  a  miners'  store  —  a  stock  in  trade 
Of  odds  and  ends  of  all  sorts.     He  was  then 
A  sturdy  fellow,  full  of  schemes  and  plans, 
But  sticking  like  a  bulldog,  once  they're  made. 

He  never  trusted  to  a  turn  of  cards; 

He  spent  his  money  only  on  his  wife 

And  on  his  schemes,  and  somehow  day  by  day 

He  seemed  to  cut  a  little  wider  swath. 

But  he  was  poor  and  none  too  proud  at  that, 

For  I  have  seen  him  with  his  loaded  cart, 

Driving  along  here  on  the  rough  red  roads 

That  run  through  Placer  County  east  and  west 

From  Clipper  Gap  to  Lone  Star  and  beyond, 

From  Yuba  Canyon  on  to  Placerville. 

We  fellows  laughed  then  at  the  pains  he  took 
To  balance  up  his  books  and  square  accounts. 
With  us,  come  easy  —  and  it  easy  went. 
The  stream  of  gold  dust  from  the  old  North  Fork 
Flowed  in  our  pockets  and  flowed  out  again, 
And  left  them  just  as  empty  as  before. 

But  'twas  not  so  with  him,  sir.    Not  a  thought 
Of  cards  or  wine  or  woman  ever  moved 
His  mind  a  moment  from  his  purposes; 
And  everything  he  touched  turned  into  gold. 

C  491  3 


The  Days  of  a  Man  £1893 

So  things  went  with  him  till  one  day  he  shook 
The  dust  of  Placer  County  from  his  feet, 
And  from  the  mountains  down  to  town  he  went 
To  work  at  other,  maybe  bigger  schemes; 
And  some  one  at  the  Bluff  bought  out  his  store. 

And  I  grew  tired  at  last  of  miner's  fare, 
Worn  out  with  washing  gold  and  waiting  luck; 
Washing  for  gold  down  there  at  Murderer's  Bar, 
Waiting  for  luck  away  up  on  Lone  Star  — 
I  came  down  here  to  where  the  Forks  unite, 
To  this  old  bridge,  and  here  for  twenty  years 
I've  taken  toll  from  every  passer-by. 

I  wash  a  little  gold  out  day  by  day 
But  mostly  watch  my  river  flowing  by. 
Good  friends  we  are,  the  old  North  Fork  and  I; 
I  like  to  hear  him  'neath  his  melting  snows, 
Calling  the  little  brooks  to  follow  him 
As  down  he  goes  headforemost  to  the  sea. 
I  watch  the  squirrels  on  the  digger  pine 
Hoarding  up  stores  for  days  that  never  come. 

I  sit  and  see  the  seasons  come  and  go, 

The  white  cloak  slipping  from  the  mountain  tops, 

Edged  with  a  fringe  of  milk-white  waterfalls, 

That  fade  away  before  the  thirsty  sun,  — 

When  the  green  foothills  change  to  gray  and  brown. 

But  best  of  all  I  love  October  days, 

When  the  blue  haze  hangs  over  all  the  woods, 

And  the  deep  slopes  flame  out  in  red  and  gold, 

As  first  the  black  oaks  feel  the  touch  of  frost. 

I  love  the  live  oaks  too;    they  never  change, 
But  stand  out  dark  in  sunshine  as  in  storm;  — 
The  only  friends  I  have  that  do  not  change. 

Even  my  river  here,  the  old  North  Fork, 

Is  not  the  river  that  I  used  to  know; 

For  piles  of  sand  and  gravel  fill  the  bars, 

Where  grass  and  flowers  grew  to  the  water's  edge 

C  492  3 


1893]    Obstacles  to  Settlement  of  Estate 

Back  in  the  '50' s  when  we  both  were  young  — 
I  and  the  river.    Well,  it  seemed  so  then. 
We  both  have  had  too  much  of  mining  camps; 
No  winter  rains  can  wash  their  stains  away. 

Oh,  yes;    he  built  the  railroad  through  these  hills, 
For  luck  stuck  to  him  —  he  would  not  let  go 
When  it  came  to  him;    that  was  just  his  way. 
To  some  men  luck  comes  once  and  not  again, 
To  some  men  it  comes  once  and  stays  with  them 
Because  they  never  let  it  go. 

They  say  he  left  his  money  to  the  world 
And  left  the  world  forever  richer  for  it; 
It  may  be  that's  his  luck  —  I  do  not  know. 
If  so,  the  world  is  lucky. 

There's  the  stage, 

And  you  must  go  across  to  Placerville; 
You  should  have  been  here  thirty  years  ago 
When  Horace  Greeley  rode  to  Placerville 
And  Hank  Monk  held  the  ribbons. 

What!  You  say 
"Old  Hank  become  a  chestnut!"     Well,  goodby. 


As  already  stated,  it  was  Stanford's  intention 
and  that  of  his  wife  to  give  their  whole  estate  to  the 
University;  they  had,  moreover,  arranged  that 
the  one  to  survive  should  complete  the  endowment. 
Because  of  two  tremendous  obstacles  that  pur- 
pose was  brought  about  only  after  six  years  of  most 
persistent  effort.  These  obstacles  were,  first,  the 
legal  necessity  of  clearing  the  estate  of  all  obliga- 
tions—  a  process  made  almost  impossible  by  a 
sequence  of  extraordinary  complications  with  which 

C  493  3 


The  Days  of  a  Man  £1893 

Defect  in     I  am  about  to  deal;    and  second,  a  defect  in  the 
enabling     enabling  act  of  the  state  legislature  on  which  the 
endowment  grant  rested,  a  flaw  which  brought  the 
latter  into  conflict  with  the  Constitution  of  Cali- 
fornia. 

By  the  provisions  of  Stanford's  will  the  University 
was  to  receive  two  and  one-half  million  dollars 
outright,  each  known  relative  (about  twenty-five 
in  number)  one  hundred  thousand,  his  favorite 
brother,  Thomas  Welton  Stanford  of  Melbourne, 
Australia,  three  hundred  thousand,  and  Mrs.  Stan- 
ford the  remainder  of  the  estate,  it  being  his  desire, 
as  I  have  said,  that  she  should  have  the  privilege 
of  directing  and  completing  their  common  memorial 
gift..  The  payment  of  debts,  amounting  in  all  to 
about  three  millions,  having  legal  precedence,  legacies 
and  endowment  as  well  had  to  wait ;  and  even  the 
relatively  small  sum  bequeathed  directly 'to  the  Uni- 
versity was  not  available  for  several  years.  Upon 
Welton  receipt  of  his  portion,  however,  Welton  Stanford 
Stanford  immediately  turned  back  half  of  it  to  be  used  in 
the  erection  of  a  library  building,  the  rest  being 
later  given  for  an  art  gallery  and  other  specific 
purposes. 

Following  the  death  of  her  husband,  Mrs.  Stan- 
ford   remained    in   close   seclusion   for   two  weeks. 
She  had  very  important  decisions  to  make.     The 
The  panic   worst  panic  in  America  —  foreseen,  as  I  have  said, 
0/1893      by  Mr.  Stanford — was  already  imminent.    All  in- 
comes from  business  had  ceased.     Beyond  a  collec- 
tion of  rare  jewels  presented  to  her  from  time  to 
time   by  her  husband   she   possessed   nothing   but 
the  community  estate;    this  she  could  draw  upon 
for  personal  maintenance  only  until  all  obligations 

C  494  3 


MR.  AND  MRS.  LELAND  STANFORD,   1850 


1893]  The  Die  Is  Cast 

were  canceled  —  a  matter  of  at  least  a  year  or  two 
perhaps,  even  if  everything  went  well. 

At  the  end  of  the  fortnight  she  called  me  to  her 
home  to  say  that  the  die  was  cast.  She  was  going 
ahead  with  Leland  Stanford  Junior  University. 
To  that  end  she  would  let  us  have  all  the  money 
she  possibly  could ;  for  a  time  it  might  not  be  much  — 
we  must  get  down  to  bedrock,  meanwhile,  however, 
keeping  the  institution  open  and  doing  our  level 
best. 

The  task  was  not  easy,  as  a  few  details  out  of  many 
will  make  clear.  It  had  been  the  founder's  an- 
nounced intention  to  offer  the  highest  scale  of  sal- 
aries as  a  means  of  securing  the  best  available 
teachers.  To  a  large  extent  this  plan  was  carried 
out,  the  average  in  each  grade  having  been  for  the 
most  part  higher  than  in  other  large  institutions 
generally.  But  even  the  amounts  due  for  the  first  Professors 
three  weeks  of  the  month  of  June  (for  which  Stan-  asersonal 
ford  was  personally  responsible)  could  not  be  paid  servants 
until  the  courts  ruled  by  whom  and  to  whom  such 
sums  were  due.  As  to  continued  remuneration, 
president  and  professors  alike  had  to  be  regarded 
by  the  Probate  Court  as  Mrs.  Stanford's  personal 
servants  —  the  University,  as  such,  having  for  the 
time  no  recognized  status. 

And  for  two  months  no  money  was  available  for  The  bag 
any  purpose  whatever.     One   picturesque  incident  °fgold 
will  illustrate  our  predicament.     Late   in  August, 
Probate  Judge  James  B.  Coffey  sent  down  to  Mrs. 
Stanford  a  bag  containing  the  sum  of  $500  in  twenty- 
dollar  gold  pieces  to  meet  the  immediate  needs  of 
her   servants.      Stating   that    the    household    could 
wait,  she  told  me  to  divide  the  money  among  those 

C  495  3 


The  Days  of  a  Man  [1893 

professors  who  might  be  needing  it  the  most.  At 
once  I  set  out,  intending  to  assign  $50  apiece  to 
ten  persons;  but  as  no  one  could  give  change,  I 
was  obliged  to  distribute  by  forties  and  sixties! 

It  chanced,  however,  that  further  alleviation  was 
now  at  hand.  Shortly  after  Mr.  Stanford's  death, 
I  had  procured  from  the  Stock  Farm  a  series  of  or- 
dinary account  blanks  on  which  I  noted  the  amount 
due  each  professor,  as  an  "employee,"  for  "services" 
rendered  from  June  i,  the  date  of  the  last  payment 
by  our  "employer,"  to  June  21,  when  the  estate 
passed  into  the  hands  of  the  Court.  Returning 
from  my  rounds  with  the  bag  of  gold,  I  was  surprised 
to  receive  a  check  for  $13,000  which  had  been  sent 
down  by  order  of  the  Judge  to  cover  our  June  claims. 
Mrs.  Stanford  then  said  diffidently  that  she  would 
be  greatly  obliged  if  we  would  return  the  gold  already 
distributed,  as  she  could  make  good  use  of  it. 
A  monthly  Not  long  afterward  the  stress  was  still  further 
allowance  relieved  through  a  provisional  arrangement  allowed 
by  Judge  Coffey  as  a  matter  of  substantial  justice 
if  not  of  legal  precedent.  This  to,ok  the  form  of  a 
monthly  allowance  (to  Mrs.  Stanford)  of  $12,500 
for  "service"  over  and  above  the  necessities  of  her 
personal  maintenance.  But  the  salary  roll  alone 
already  amounted  to  $15,000  a  month,  and  addi- 
tional teachers  had  been  engaged  for  the  coming 
year.  Plainly  an  extra  source  of  income  had  to  be 
found.  Tuition  up  to  that  time  had  been  entirely 
free;  we  were  later  obliged,  though  with  much  re- 
luctance, to  charge  a  yearly  registration  fee  of  twenty 
dollars  —  thirty  to  those  of  irregular  standing. 

The  situation  was  now  again  modified  by  volun- 
tary action  on  the  part  of  the  faculty  and  president, 

[4963 


1893]  Retrenchment 


whereby  for  six  years  each  individual  waived  ten  Contribu- 
per  cent  of  his  salary,  thus  making  a  total  contribu-  tion,by 

•  r      i  i  •    i  -j     r         r        i  i    professors 

tion  of  about  3 100,000,  which  paid  for  books  and 
apparatus  as  well  as  for  minor  instructors  and  as- 
sistants. At  the  same  time,  also,  it  was  understood 
that  no  deficit  could  be  incurred  at  the  University, 
the  president  being  held  personally  responsible  for 
any  debts  left  unpaid  at  the  end  of  the  academic 
year.  As  a  further  precaution  I  was  obliged  vir- 
tually to  pledge  that  no  refund  of  unpaid  or  waived 
salaries  should  ever  be  demanded.  Moreover,  all 
payments  were  made  by  my  personal  cheque,  as 
the  money  came  to  me  at  very  irregular  intervals. 

During  these  unprecedented  times  all  contracts 
had  to  be  made  out  by  the  year,  subject  to  the 
limitations  indicated  above,  salaries  being  fixed  at 
specified  sums  "or  as  much  thereof  as  can  be  ob- 
tained." But  however  trying  the  situation,  prac- 
tically every  one  accepted  it  in  a  fine  spirit  and  with- 
out abatement  of  courage  on  the  part  of  either 
teachers  or  students. 

Meanwhile,  before  Mrs.  Stanford  could  secure 
any  control  as  trustee,  the  Vina  estate  was  plunging 
the  University  into  debt  at  the  rate  of  nearly  $500  a 
day.  Indeed,  both  Vina  and  Palo  Alto  had  been 
conducted  by  their  owner  as  experiment  stations, 
with  no  attempt  to  make  money.  All  these  ex- 
penditures had  to  be  abruptly  terminated,  as  other- 
wise they  would  speedily  have  wrecked  the  institu- 
tion. But  herein  lay  a  serious  peril.  The  Vina  The  crisis 
army  of  vineyardists,  many  of  them  brought  over  at  Vina 
from  France,  could  not  be  dismissed  without  pay, 
and  no  money  was  forthcoming.  At  one  time 
general  discontent  threatened  to  lead  to  the  burning 

C4973 


The  Days  of  a  Man 


£1893 


The 

"freezing 

out" 

process 


Pioneer 
reception 


of  the  buildings,  a  calamity  averted  by  the  timely 
discovery  of  a  forgotten,  paid-up  life-insurance 
policy,1  the  only  insurance  of  any  kind  Mr.  Stan- 
ford ever  carried. 

Another  serious  embarrassment  arose  from  the 
nature  of  the  Stanford  holdings;  that  is,  the  bulk 
of  the  property,  a  one-fourth  interest  in  the  Southern 
Pacific  system,  had  to  be  maintained  unbroken  to 
insure  representation  on  the  board  of  directors. 
Divided,  smaller  parts  might  be  subject  to  the  process 
of  "freezing  out,"  not  unknown  in  railway  history; 
the  untoward  experience  of  Johns  Hopkins  Uni- 
versity in  connection  with  the  Baltimore  and  Ohio 
we  accepted  as  a  warning.  And  during  the  panic 
there  were  no  buyers  at  all. 

Many  minor  incidents  of  the  struggle  I  must 
pass  by.  Wise  management  and  rigid  economy  were 
imperative,  but  Mrs.  Stanford  proved  equal  to  the 
new  demands.  If  all  else  failed,  there  were  the 
jewels  to  fall  back  upon;  and  she  steadily  refused 
to  consider  the  advice  (almost  unanimous)  to  close 
the  University,  or  most  of  its  departments,  until 
some  more  favorable  time.  In  1895  she  invited  the 
Pioneer  Class  to  a  reception  at  her  city  home,  be- 
cause, as  she  told  me,  it  was  probably  the  last  class 
she  could  ever  see  graduate.  For  we  still  had  noth- 
ing to  run  on  save  the  precarious  "servant  allow- 
ance," liable  to  be  cut  down  at  any  time.  Occasion- 
ally we  sold  some  horses,  but  as  our  ownership  of 
the  animals  at  the  Stock  Farm  had  not  yet  been 
legally  established,  we  were  not  sure  whether  they 
were  university  property  or  part  of  the  general 

1  This  was  policy  No.  I  for  $10,000,  taken  in  pure  good  will  at  the  organ- 
ization of  a  new  company  on  the  Coast. 

C4983 


1893]  Zfo  Government  Suit 

estate,  though   fortunately  our  assumed  right  was 
never  contested. 

During  these  difficult  days  Mrs.  Stanford  was 
heartened  by  the  support  of  certain  friends,  es- 
pecially three  members  of  the  provisional  board  of 
trustees,  Judge  Francis  E.  Spencer,  Judge  Samuel 
F.  Leib,  and  Timothy  Hopkins.  No  one  can  tell 
how  much  the  University  owed  to  the  friendly  and 
practical  interest  of  these  devoted  people.  Judge  stanch 
Spencer,  Mrs.  Stanford's  representative  on  the  suPP°rtfrs 
Southern  Pacific  board  of  directors,  was  particu- 
larly alert  as  to  her  interests  in  that  connection. 
Judge  Leib,  who  became  president  of  the  provisional 
board  of  trustees  after  Spencer's  death,  looked 
after  investments  and  safeguarded  the  properties 
from  outside  attack.  Mr.  Hopkins  (who  had  al- 
ready equipped  our  Marine  Station  at  Pacific 
Grove)  gave  special  attention  to  immediate  needs, 
buying  books  and  apparatus  without  taking  re- 
ceipts or  asking  returns.  From  across  the  sea,  also, 
Welton  Stanford  extended  his  warm  sympathy, 
concretely  expressed  in  the  gift  of  a  Library  Build- 
ing and  various  works  of  art. 


4 

During  the  course  of  1893,  adjustments  being  well  A 
under  way,  we  had  at  last  begun  to  see  daylight, 
when  the  institution  received  a  staggering  blow 
from  an  entirely  unexpected  quarter.  Near  the 
end  of  the  year  the  United  States,  in  the  name  of  the 
Attorney  General,  brought  suit  of  the  nature  of  an 
injunction  to  prevent  distribution  of  the  Stanford 
estate  until  $15,000,000,  Stanford's  share  of  the 

C499  3 


The  Days  of  a  Man  £1893 

debt  of  $27,000,000  (now  risen  to  $60,000,000  from 
accumulation  of  interest)  originally  borrowed  from 
the  Government  by  the  Central  Pacific  Railway 
Company,  should  mature  and  be  paid.  This  was  a 
peculiarly  arbitrary  proceeding,  as  these  notes  were 
not  due  for  a  number  of  years  —  the  first  in  1895, 
the  last  in  1899.  Concerning  the  whole  matter 
there  was  much  misunderstanding  as  well  as  wanton 
misrepresentation.1  The  essential  facts,  easily  veri- 
fied, I  may  here  present  in  some  detail. 

In  the  construction  of  the  Central  Pacific  Rail- 
way, the  four  builders  exhausted  their  funds  and 
their  personal  credit,  even  with  the  large  conditional 
grants  of  government  land  along  the  line  —  holdings 
which  were,  of  course,  worthless   unless   the   road 
Govern-      could  be  put  through.2     The  United  States  Gov- 
^"cenlrd    ernment  tnen  came  to  their  further  aid  with  the 
Pacific       loan  mentioned  above,  for  which  it  took  a  second 
mortgage  on  the  property,  although  the  first  mort- 
gage, held  in  private  hands,  was  generally  thought 

1  Most  of  the  then  current  accusations  against  the  Southern  Pacific  Com- 
pany in  its  relations  to  the  Government  were  based  on  the  assumption  that 
the  loan  would  never  be  paid;  it  was,  however,  paid  in  full,  with  interest,  on 
the  days  it  became  due. 

It  is  not  necessary  here  for  me  to  defend  or  criticize  the  conduct  of  the 
Southern  Pacific  Company  in  acquiring  political  domination  in  the  state. 
That  is  a  matter  in  which  I  had  no  part;  and  while  the  relation  of  local 
officials  with  the  University  was  most  cordial,  the  Stanford  interests  were  more 
or  less  divergent  from  those  of  the  other  partners.  It  was  asserted  on  the  one 
hand  that  "the  railway  controlled  the  press  of  the  state  through  judicious  ad- 
vertising, disarmed  opposing  attorneys  through  fees,  and  managed  the  legisla- 
ture through  a  political  agent  whose  duty  it  was  to  prevent  the  election  of  an 
unfriendly  majority."  On  the  other  hand  it  was  claimed  that  "  without  such 
arrangements,  the  integrity  of  the  railway  properties  could  not  be  secured 
against  *  cinch  bills '  and  blackmailing  attacks,  the  latter  often  in  the  guise 
of  reform.  When  the  danger  from  such  sources  abated,  the  railway  went  out 
of  politics." 

2  It  should  also  be  noted  that  with  the  exception  of  the  Humboldt  and 
Truckee  valleys,  timbered  areas  in  the  Sierras,  and  fruit  lands  in  the  foothills, 
most  of  these  tracts  are  still  valueless. 

C  500  3 


1893]     "The  Crime  of  the  Century" 

practically  to  cover  its  minimum  value.  Never- 
theless, at  Washington  the  pressing  need  of  trans- 
continental connection  had  seemed  to  justify  the 
risk.  As  to  the  wisdom  of  the  loan  there  was  later 
much  difference  of  opinion,  accentuated  by  Hun- 
tington's  own  cynical  remark  (for  personal  purposes) 
that  "the  Central  Pacific  was  two  streaks  of  rust 
and  a  right  of  way/'  On  the  other  hand,  high  TWO 
authorities  in  railway  matters  urged  that  as  it  was  valuatwns 
the  most  direct  route  possible  to  the  Coast  it  would 
surely  have  a  permanent  and  steadily  rising  value 
over  and  above  all  indebtedness.  But  in  bringing 
suit  the  Government  officials  assumed  the  second 
mortgage  to  be  valueless. 

By  a  statute  of  California,  each  original  stock- 
holder in  a  delinquent  corporation  is  individually 
liable  for  his  share  of  its  indebtedness,  provided  that 
suit  is  begun  within  three  years  after  organization.1 
That  period  had  long  since  lapsed,  but  in  the  official 
brief  it  was  claimed  that  statutes  of  limitation  do 
not  hold  against  the  Government.  The  question  of 
liability  had  not  been  raised  in  connection  with  the 
earlier  distributions  of  the  Crocker  and  Hopkins 
estates.  Huntington  was  still  living,  and  there- 
fore could  not  be  attacked.  Some  have  suggested 
that  it  was  for  the  latter' s  interest  to  have  the  matter 
tested  at  the  expense  of  the  Stanford  estate,  a  pro- 
ceeding in  which  the  sympathy  of  California  was 
sure  to  be  enlisted  on  the  side  of  the  University 
and  its  surviving  founder.  Meanwhile  the  fact  that  NO  kelp 
the  two  other  owners  of  the  Southern  Pacific  sys-  fr°™ners 
tern,  the  Crocker  and  Searles  (formerly  Hopkins) 

1  The  purpose  of  this  statute  was  to  discourage  "wildcat"  enterprises,  as 
the  phrase  then  went. 

n  501  a 


"The  Days  of  a  Man  £1893 

interests,  also  declined  to  assist  in  any  way 
added  enormously  to  our  difficulties.  All  of  them, 
more  especially  Mr.  Huntington,  were  financially 
concerned  in  the  outcome,  though  they  left  Mrs. 
Stanford  to  make  the  fight  alone. 

But  to  attempt  to  analyze  here  the  various  mo- 
tives, political  or  personal,  behind  the  legal  attack 
is  not  a  part  of  my  purpose.     Fortunately  it  now 
makes  no  difference  what  they  were,  and  the  matter 
may  well   pass   into  oblivion.     In  justice,  also,  it 
should  be  said  that  none  of  the  present  owners  or 
managers   (1921)   of  the  Southern   Pacific  were  in 
any  way  concerned  in  the  matter,  for  entire  owner- 
ship and  control  passed  into  new  hands  at  the  end 
of  the  century.     Again  it  is  only  fair  to  note  that 
the  attitude  of  which  I   complain  was  the  usual 
business  point  of  view.     For  it  seemed  impossible 
to  save  all  three  —  railway,  estate,  and  university 
—  in  those  years  of  panic.     Current   railroad  re- 
ceipts (there  were  no  profits)  were  apparently  re- 
quired to  continue  operations,  and  expenditures  for 
the  University  naturally  seemed  wasteful  and  dan- 
" Stopping  gerous  to  the  other  owners.     According  to  Hun- 
ibe circus"  tington,  the  way  out  was  to  "stop  the  circus."    In 
Mrs.  Stanford's  mind,  however,  the  estate  existed 
solely  for  the  benefit  of  the  institution  founded  in 
memory  of  her  son.     To  save  the  property  on  the 
terms  suggested  seemed  to  her  like  throwing  over 
the  passengers  to  lighten  the  ship.    And  as  matters 
turned  out,   university,   estate,   and   railway  were 
all  saved  alike. 

Leading  jurists  consulted  by  Mrs.  Stanford  agreed 
that  the  Government  had  no  case.  Briefly  the  plea 
asserted  that  nothing  was  yet  due  the  United  States, 

n  502  3 


18933        Trial  of  the  Stanford  Case 

nor  was  there  any  reason  to  suppose  that  any  part 
of  the  loan,  when  due,  would  remain  unpaid.  More- 
over, the  limitation  of  three  years,  being  an  integral 
part  of  the  statute  in  question,  would  hold  against 
the  Government  as  against  other  creditors.  Fur- 
thermore, the  money  borrowed  was  not  a  debt  in- 
curred in  corporation  business. 

The  great  suit  was  brought  to  trial  in  the  United  Favorable 
States  District   Court  of  San  Francisco,  the  Uni-  decisions 
versity  being  represented  by  Judge  John  Garber, 
then  leader  of  the   California   Bar.     The  decision 
of  the  Court,  written  by  Judge  Erskine  K.  Ross, 
was  in  our  favor.     The  case  was  then  appealed  to 
the   Superior  Court,   composed  of  Judges  William 
W.    Morrow,    William    B.    Gilbert,    and    Thomas 
Hawley;  their  decision,  prepared  by  Judge  Morrow, 
was  also  in  our  favor.     The  Government's  repre-  Appeal  to 
sentative  next  appealed  to  the  Supreme  Court  at  s"Preme 

\TT      i  •  r\  •  •    •       i      Court 

Washington.  Our  situation  was  now  most  critical. 
Funds  were  scanty  as  well  as  precarious,  and  the 
Supreme  Court  being  far  in  arrears,  it  seemed  hope- 
less to  expect  an  early  decision.  Any  considerable 
delay,  however,  would  involve  our  ruin. 

At  this  point  Mrs.  Stanford,  disregarding  legal 
advice,  acted  on  her  womanly  initiative.  Going 
directly  to  Washington,  she  laid  the  case  before  Mr. 
Cleveland,  explaining  that  it  was  a  matter  of  life 
and  death  to  the  University  and  beseeching  him  to 
use  his  influence  toward  bringing  the  case  to  a 
speedy  trial.  After  considerable  natural  hesitation,  Cleveland's 
the  President  saw  his  way  to  comply,  and  at  his  ™ 
request  Chief  Justice  Melville  B.  Fuller  assigned  an 
advanced  date  for  our  hearing.  Before  the  Supreme 
Court  we  were  represented  by  Joseph  Choate,  then 

C  503  3 


The  Days  of  a  Man  [1896 

the  foremost  legal  advocate  in  America,  who  relied 
largely  on  Judge  Garber's  brief  in  developing  his 
argument.  And  on  March  2,  1896,  the  Govern- 
ment injunction  against  distribution  of  the  Stan- 
ford estate  was  finally  thrown  out  of  court  by  a 
unanimous  decision  written  by  Justice  John  Marshall 
Harlan.  His  exhaustive  review  closed  as  follows: 

Harlan's  Throughout  the  whole  of  the  Act  referred  to  is  the  mani- 
dfcision  fested  purpose  that  the  California  corporation,  and  the  other 
State  corporations  named,  should  enjoy  the  rights,  immunities, 
benefits,  and  privileges  given  to  them  upon  the  same  terms 
and  conditions  as  were  prescribed  for  the  Union  Pacific  Rail- 
road Company.  .  .  .  The  relations  between  the  California 
corporation  and  State  were  of  no  concern  to  the  National 
Government  at  the  time  the  purpose  was  formed  to  establish 
a  great  highway  across  the  continent  for  governmental  and 
public  use.  Congress  chose  this  existing,  artificial  being  as 
instrumental  to  accomplish  national  ends,  and  the  relations  be- 
tween the  United  States  and  that  corporation  ought  to  be 
determined  by  the  enactments  which  established  those  re- 
lations; and,  if  those  enactments  do  not  expressly,  nor  by 
implication,  subject  the  stockholders  to  liability  for  its  debts, 
it  is  to  be  presumed  that  Congress  intended  to  waive  its  right 
to  impose  such  liability.  Judgment  is  therefore  affirmed. 


5 

Obstacle  Thus  was  surmounted  the  greatest  though  by 
of  debt  no  means  the  last  obstacle  in  Stanford  University's 
first  decade,  for  the  general  estate  still  remained 
heavily  encumbered.  Five  and  one-half  millions 
of  dollars  were  due  to  banks  and  outside  legatees, 
but  the  process  of  settlement  was  hopelessly  slow, 
there  being  no  demand  whatever  for  landed  proper- 
ties, of  which  there  were  many  pieces  scattered 
through  California.  It  is  true  that  our  share  (one 

C  504  3 


1896]        The  Long  Fight  Continued 

fourth)  in  the  street  railway  system  of  San  Fran- 
cisco readily  brought  about  one  million  and  a  half; 
but  the  highest  offer  before  1898  for  the  whole  of 
the  Stanford  holdings  in  the  Southern  Pacific  was 
only  about  five  millions.  Indeed,  the  Probate 
Court's  official  inventory  (1893)  of  the  entire  estate 
estimated  its  current  worth  as  about  seventeen 
millions  only.  And  in  spite  of  great  ultimate  value, 
at  forced  sale  many  fine  pieces  of  property  (ranches 
especially)  would  have  then  brought  next  to  nothing. 

Still  more  distressing  was  Mrs.  Stanford's  con-  Mrs. 
stant  anxiety  lest  she  might  not  live  long  enough  to  f™l°ryd's 
free  the  estate  and  thus  bring  it  into  her  own  hands 
—  a  condition  precedent  to  deeding  it  to  the  Uni- 
versity. Moreover,  the  technical  discrepancy  in 
the  Enabling  Act  left  the  original  board  of  trustees 
impotent  to  receive  endowments.  For  this  em- 
barrassment the  only  solution  lay  in  an  amendment 
to  the  erratic  state  constitution  x  which  should  recog- 
nize Stanford  by  name  as  a  quasi-public  institution, 
capable  of  receiving  donations  for  educational  pur- 
poses —  an  achievement  effected  in  the  fall  of 
1900  through  a  remarkable  series  of  efforts. 

Anticipating  the  referendum,  George  E.  Crothers,  Putting 
a  "Pioneer,"  prepared  the  amendment  and,  assisted  Stanford 
by  Francis  V.  Keisling,  '98,  took  charge  of  the  state-  California 
wide   campaign,  enlisting  the  services  of  Stanford 
men   and  women  by  whom  the   necessity  for   the 
change  was  explained  in  almost  every  district.     As 
a  result  the  proposition  was  carried  by  the  highest 
majority  ever  received  here;  by  that  time,  at  least, 

1  Admirably  described  by  Bryce  in  "The  American  Commonwealth" 
(Chapter  xc)  but  since  modified  by  the  addition  of  upward  of  a  hundred 
amendments. 

C  505  3 


twn 


The  Days  of  a  Man  £1896 

the  University  had  come  to  be  fully  recognized  as 
belonging  to  "the  children  of  California. " 

In  the  amendment  partial  relief  from  very  burden- 
some state  taxation  was  also  provided,  the  legis- 
lature being  authorized  to  exempt  the  university 
buildings  and  all  personal  property  outside  of  real 
estate.  As  to  the  latter  limitation,  it  was  necessary 
as  a  concession  to  Tehama  and  Butte  counties,  in 
which  the  institution  held  76,000  acres  of  farm  land. 
Mrs.  Stanford  meanwhile  made  many  and  various 
attempts  to  dispose  of  property  and  cancel  obliga- 
A valuable  tions.  In  the  summer  of  1897  she  went  to  the 
burden  Queen's  Jubilee,  carrying  in  a  suitcase1  jewels 
worth  nearly  half  a  million,  which  she  hoped  to 
sell  advantageously  because  the  social  leaders  of 
the  world  would  then  be  gathered  in  London.  But 
finding  no  adequate  market,  she  was  obliged  to 
bring  back  the  bulk  of  the  collection. 

While  upon  the  subject,  I  may  as  well  explain 
the  final  disposition  of  this  romantic  asset.  In 
1905,  only  a  week  before  her  death,  Mrs.  Stanford 
turned  the  collection  over  to  the  permanent  board 
of  trustees  —  already  functioning  —  with  instructions 
to  sell  it,  the  proceeds  "to  be  known  and  designated 
The  as  the  Jewel  Fund/'  the  earnings  to  be  used  solely 
for  the  purchase  of  books.  In  1908  the  sale  was  finally 
made,  thus  establishing  a  fund  of  $500,000,  yielding 
a  guaranteed  yearly  income  of  $25,000. 

During  the  continuance  of  our  difficult  situation 

1  It  was  simply  to  save  the  large  cost  of  transportation  with  insurance  that 
Mrs.  Stanford  and  Miss  Berner  took  upon  themselves  the  delicate  responsi- 
bility of  personally  caring  for  the  treasure.  Knowing  their  determination,  I 
asked  Professor  Kellogg,  then  about  to  leave  for  Leipzig,  to  go  by  the  same 
boat  and  act  as  special  guardian  on  the  way  over.  This  role  he  generously 
accepted,  much  to  Mrs.  Stanford's  relief. 

n  506  3 


1896]  Legal  Obstacles 

we\  tried  various  methods  of  attaining  security. 
Mrs.  Stanford  made  a  will  in  which,  after  a  few  in- 
dividual gifts,  the  entire  remaining  estate  was  left 
to  the  University  as  residuary  legatee.  But  that 
document  also  conflicted  with  a  statute  of  Cali- 
fornia under  which  not  more  than  one  third  of  an 
estate  can  be  left  "by  will  and  testament  to  charity," 
this  being  a  provision  early  devised  to  prevent  death 
bed  deeds  to  the  Church. 

The   state   legislature  was   accordingly  asked   in  Efforts  to 
1901  to  modify  the  statute  in  the  University's  in-  jj^jjj* 
terest;   our  request  was  met  by  the  passage  of  an  win  and 
amendment  excluding  one  special  form  of  "charity"  testament 
—  namely,    the    endowment    of    non-sectarian    in- 
stitutions of  higher  education.    The  bill  was  vetoed 
by  Governor  James   H.    Budd,   however,   and   for 
reasons  which  I  must  admit  were  valid.    To  legislate 
against   sectarianism  is  to  discriminate  in  matters 
of  religion — a  policy  foreign  to  American  traditions. 
My  own  feeling,  as  then  expressed,  was  that  if  Stan- 
ford were  specially  relieved,  we  should  help  all  col- 
legiate institutions,  whether  denominational  or  not, 
to  secure  similar  exemption. 

At  this  point  the  uncertainties  surrounding  a  last 
will  and  testament  were  strongly  borne  in  on  us. 
In  California  the  sanctity  of  such  documents  has 
not  always  been  respected.  I  had  therefore  asked 
the  opinion  of  a  legal  friend,  Mr.  E.  L.  Campbell, 
as  to  the  possibility  of  a  testator  making  a  disposal 
of  property  prospective  but  not  yet  in  his  hands. 
Replying,  he  warned  me  against  placing  any  trust  A  cold 
whatever  in  testamentary  acts.  This  advice,  cold  °P™wn 
and  impersonal,  was  a  blow  to  Mrs.  Stanford's  hopes, 
but  it  stirred  her  to  redoubled  effort. 

C  5073 


The  Days  of  a  Man  [1896 

On  my  own  initiative  I  then  ventured  to  draw  up 
a  document  constituting  a  special  trust  group  to 
whom  was  assigned  all  right  and  title  in  any  prop- 
erties coming  to  Mrs.  Stanford  as  her  husband's 
residuary  legatee;  signed  and  recognized  as  legally 
Forlorn  valid,  it  would  leave  practically  nothing  in  her  name 
bop*  at  the  moment  of  death.  As  members  of  the  pro- 
posed trust  I  chose  three  of  her  most  loyal  and 
substantial  friends.  These  men  were  in  no  way 
consulted,  and  so  far  as  I  know  have  never  learned 
of  the  confidence  involved.  Each  night  for  nearly 
two  years  Mrs.  Stanford  placed  the  document  on  a 
table  at  her  bedside,  where  it  could  be  signed  in 
case  of  sudden  illness.  Fortunately,  that  emergency 
never  arose.  Whether  or  not  the  paper  would  have 
been  valid  in  law  I  do  not  know,  but  it  would  cer- 
tainly have  made  a  powerful  appeal  to  the  public 
sentiment  of  California. 

Rigid  During  all  those  years  of  struggle,   Mrs.   Stan- 

ford's personal  economies  were  many  and  severe, 
every  avoidable  outlay  of  whatever  kind  being 
rigidly  eliminated.  In  June,  1896,  as  I  was  about 
to  leave  for  Bering  Sea  on  a  government  commission, 
she  asked  if  I  did  not  think  she  could  again  afford  a 
housekeeper,  now  that  our  affairs  were  looking  so 
much  better.  For  three  years  her  establishment 
had  been  served  by  two  domestics  only  —  a  Chinese 
cook  and  an  aged  butler  of  other  days. 

Somewhat  earlier,  having  gone  to  Washington  to 
close  and  settle  up  the  affairs  of  the  residence  occu- 
pied by  her  husband  and  herself  during  his  period 
as  Senator,  she  chose  to  live  in  a  private  car  to 
which  (as  partner  in  the  Southern  Pacific)  she  was 
entitled,  instead  of  going  to  an  expensive  hotel.  Of 

C  508] 


economies 


1899]  Endowment  Completed 

the  sum  of  $400  urged  upon  her  when  she  left  Cali- 
fornia by  her  brother,  Charles  G.  Lathrop  —  then 
university  treasurer  —  she  brought  back  $340,  which 
she  at  once  turned  over  to  me  toward  payment  of 
delayed  salaries. 

In  1899  came  sudden  relief  through  the  sale  of 
her  Southern  Pacific  holdings  for  about  sixteen 
millions  to  Speyer  &  Co.1  of  New  York  and  Frank- 
fort. This  transaction  freed  the  estate  from  debt, 
and  the  board  of  trustees  having  been  at  last  legal- 
ized, Mrs.  Stanford  deeded  to  it  piece  after  piece 
of  property  as  it  came  into  her  hands.  In  the  end  Blanket 
she  also  made  a  "blanket  deed"  of  nearly  every-  ***** 
thing  she  possessed,  amounting  in  value  to  upward 
of  twenty-five  millions,  but  retaining  about  three 
millions  "to  play  with,"  as  she  said.  Nevertheless, 
most  of  that  sum  she  put  into  additional  university 
buildings.  The  numerous  duplications  involved  in 
the  "blanket"  were  intended  to  guard  against 
possible  flaws  in  individual  deeds. 

The  endowment  of  the  University  had  now  been 
effected  with  unflinching  adherence  to  the  original 
plan,  and  in  spite  of  difficulties  unprecedented  and 
seemingly  insurmountable.  The  experience  had  of 
course  a  certain  value  in  checking  waste.  It  meant, 
however,  a  trying  period  of  hope  deferred ;  and  un- 
fortunately not  all  of  those  who  stood  by  through 
the  "dark  ages"  remained  to  share  the  better  times 

1  Mr.  James  Speyer  had  previously  given  Mrs.  Stanford  the  excellent 
advice  not  to  sell  at  prices  then  offered,  as  the  future  value  of  the  Central 
Pacific  would  necessarily  be  very  great.  He  further  assured  her  that  when 
she  felt  she  must  sell  he'  would  pay  a  million  more  than  any  other  bidder  —  a 
promise  which  he  faithfully  kept. 

The  properties  in  question,  I  may  add,  were  soon  transferred  by  the  Speyers 
to  Kuhn,  Loeb  &  Co.,  and  placed  under  the  direction  of  the  master-manager, 
Edward  H.  Harriman. 


'The  Days  of  a  Man  ^899 

which  followed.1  But  Mrs.  Stanford's  singleness  of 
purpose  was  well  expressed  in  a  letter  she  wrote  to 
me  on  September  3,  1898: 

A  sacred  Every  dollar  I  can  rightfully  call  mine  is  sacredly  laid  on 

trust  the  altar  of  my  love  for  the  University,  and  thus  it  ever  shall 

be.* 

I  shall  now  turn  back  and  resume  my  story  from 
another  side. 

NOTE 

According  to  the  Albanian  proverb,  "Open  a  cask  of  sugar 
and  the  flies  will  come  all  the  way  from  Bagdad."  The  settle- 
ment of  a  great  estate  has  somewhat  the  same  effect.  Many 
spurious  claims  were  presented,  and  the  attorney  was  obliged 
to  fight  them  all  to  avoid  a  deluge.  One  well-known  newspaper 
man  put  in  a  claim  for  $2500  for  advertising  —  to  wit,  he  had 
printed  an  account  of  the  opening  exercises. 

The  demoralizing  effects  of  unearned  legacies  were  often 
apparent,  a  few  of  the  remotely  related  legatees  having  spent 
their  share  in  advance,  and  then  blamed  "Uncle  Leland"  for 
his  "stinginess"  and  wasting  of  money  on  a  superfluous  uni- 
versity. 

Among  the  assets  were  scores  of  notes  of  politicians  and  as- 
sociates who  had  borrowed  from  Stanford.  Some  were  duly 
paid;  many,  however,  could  not  be  collected. 

1  Even  so,  during  my  administration,  notwithstanding  a  large  increase  in 
funds  after  1900,  there  was  never  at  any  time  anything  like  all  the  money  we 
urgently  needed. 

2  For  further  extracts  from  personal  letters  of  Mrs.  Stanford  see  Appendix  C- 
(page  691). 


C   510] 


CHAPTER  TWENTY-ONE 


IN  July,  1893,  Mrs.  Stanford  having  made  her  de- 
cision as  to  the  University,  it  was  thought  best  for 
me  to  keep  an  engagement  of  several  months'  stand- 
ing to  serve  as  one  of  the  judges  of  the  educational 
exhibits  in  the  great  Columbian  Exposition,  popu- 
larly known  as  the  " World's  Fair."  During  my 
stay  in  Chicago  I  was  the  guest  of  my  sister,  Mrs. 
Edwards,  whose  husband  had  charge  of  the  Expo- 
sition Bank. 

Returning  to  California,  I  was  at  once  faced  by  Need  of 
the  staggering  administrative  complications  which  ane.™ 

,   .  9°  ,  i          i  A         i  residence 

1  have  just  attempted  to  make  clear.  At  the  same 
time  a  minor  crisis  confronted  my  household,  as  it 
seemed  impossible  for  us  to  spend  another  winter  in 
Escondite.  Indeed,  some  months  before,  Mr.  Stan- 
ford had  ordered  plans  prepared  for  a  commodious 
stone  residence  to  be  rented  to  me  as  president,1 
and  a  builder's  contract  was  placed  in  his  hands  the 
afternoon  before  his  death.  But  it  will  be  readily 
understood  that  the  University  was  then  in  no 
position  to  supply  the  necessary  funds.  I  was 
therefore  compelled  to  build  for  myself  hastily  and 
under  unforeseen  conditions.  The  new  house  (which 
we  began  to  occupy  early  in  1894)  was  naturally 
much  more  modest  than  the  one  originally  con- 
templated and  entirely  inadequate  also  for  a  perma- 

1  From  the  beginning  it  was  understood  that  there  would  be  no  perquisites 
for  any  one  connected  with  the  University,  it  being  the  founder's  desire  to  pay 
ample  and  definite  salaries. 

C  5"  3 


The  Days  of  a  Man  £1893 

nent  official  residence;  but  as  things  turned  out, 
we  ourselves  never  felt  like  making  large  additions, 
and  academic  needs  seemed  always  to  forbid  our 
asking  the  University  to  provide  a  suitable  home, 
even  with  the  rental  placed  on  a  business  basis. 

At  Mrs.  Stanford's  request  we  retained  the  site 
indicated  by  her  husband,  northwest  of  the  original 
Roble  Hall,  apart  from  the  other  homes  and  en- 
circled by  a  dozen  superb  live  oaks.     These  trees, 
among  the  finest  in  the  state,  were  preserved  by  a 
former  occupant,  Jerry  Easton,  whose  abode  had 
The        stood  in  their  midst.    One  of  them  is  of  remarkable 
"™^"    interest,  being  probably  the  largest  and  most  perfect 
tree"'     "woodpecker  tree"  now  in  existence,  and  bored  full 
of  acorn  holes  from  top  to  bottom  by  the  California 
red-headed   woodpecker  —  Melanerpes  formicivorus. 
This  bird,  otherwise  much  like  its  Eastern  cousin, 
has  the  unique  habit  of  thus  storing  in  the  fall  the 
long,  slender  live-oak  nuts  against  the  days  of  need 
during  the  dry  season  of  California. 

About  the  house  we  planted  a  great  variety  of 
trees  and  shrubs  which  ultimately  grew  into  a 
crowded,  incongruous,  but  delightful  jungle.  I 
resist  my  botanical  impulse  to  name  them  all,  not- 
withstanding the  fact  that  their  appellations  are  as 
honey  on  my  lips  and  that  nearly  every  quarter  of 
the  globe,  equator  and  poles  excepted,  has  its  rep- 
resentative. Among  them  the  Australian  "bottle 
brush  tree"  —  Callistemon  —  the  Minnesota  crab- 
apple,  and  the  Japanese  cherry  stand  first  in  my 
affections.  From  Christmas,  at  which  time  our 
spring  begins,  until  June,  when  the  fields  turn 
yellow,  the  thicket  is  joyous  with  bloom.  In  the 
fall  the  flame-thorn  —  Pyracantha  —  with  its  orange 


THE  GARDEN,   1898 


THE    "  WOODPECKER  TREE" 


893  3  Our  Garden 


berries  tempts  the  golden-crowned  sparrows  to  earlier 
and  earlier  visits,  so  that  of  late  they  leave  not  a 
bite  for  the  robins  who  come  in  January,  and  who 
formerly  regarded  the  thorns  as  their  sole  preserve. 

Roses,  of  course,  we  have  in  abundance,  with  two  The 
beautiful  climbers  which  cover  the  whole  front  of  orchard 
the  house;    and  around  the  garden  extends  a  little 
orchard  with  a  variety  of  fruit  trees,  set  off  here  and 
there   by   several   sturdy  plants  of  the   "Barbary 
Fig" l  brought  directly  from  Morocco,  beside  hybrids 
from  Luther  Burbank's  wonderful  nurseries  at  Santa 
Rosa. 

The  garden  we  cheerfully  share  with  certain  other  Our 
folk  who  seem  to  think  it  theirs.  A  large  covey  of  f™nds 
quail  surely  have  prior  right,  being  "original  settlers"  quails 
already  long  established  when  we  arrived.  Finding 
us  friendly,  they  decided  to  remain,  roosting  ,at 
night  in  the  big  trees,  wandering  around  at  will  by 
day,  a  little  shy  to  be  sure,  but  confident  neverthe- 
less of  our  good  intentions.  And  a  beautiful  sight 
it  is  to  see  the  whole  unit,  young  and  old,  briskly 
deploy  across  the  open  driveway  and  dart  to  shelter 
in  the  other  covert.  If,  however,  the  house  is  quiet, 
they  calmly  take  possession  of  the  place.  Of  morn- 
ings, the  male  with  tossing  plume  perches  on  limb 
or  post,  calling  out  (at  least,  so  it  comes  to  my  ear) 
"Thirty-two,  thirty -two."  But,  as  a  matter  of  fact, 
the  real  count  of  the  covey  runs  about  forty. 

Other  birds  keep  house  with  us  —  the  fine  sickle- 
bill  or  Western  thrasher,  a  relative  of  the  mocking 

1  Opuntia  ficus-indica,  a  cactus  with  agreeable  fruit,  although  like  every 
other  species  of  cactus  a  native  of  arid  America,  has  long  been  cultivated  about 
the  Mediterranean.  The  "Barbary  Fig"  forms  the  parent  stock  from  which 
Burbank  has  developed  numbers  of  interesting  and  valuable  variants  with 
red,  white,  green,  and  yellow  fruit. 

C5I33 


tenants 


The  Days  of  a  Man  £1893 

Other        bird  and  almost  as  sweet  a  singer;    many  linnets, 
feathered     tne  maie  crimson-washed  and  with  exquisitely  sweet 

*-- "- *-  .  11  ...  r  i  • 

voice,  as  well  as  an  inordinate  taste  for  cherries; 
the  little  house  wren;  two  dainty  species  of  hum- 
ming birds;  and  the  California  jay  with  wonderful 
sky-blue  coat,  but  dreaded  and  detested  by  all  his 
smaller  neighbors  because  of  his  evil  temper.  Out- 
side in  the  great  field  lives  the  Western  meadow 
lark  with  thrush-like  notes,  quite  unlike  the  in- 
complete and  querulous  call  of  his  Eastern  cousin. 
Mounted  on  a  fence  post,  oblivious  of  the  kindly 
passer-by,  hour  after  hour  he  lifts  his  ringing  carol 
to  the  day. 

Some  In  addition  to  our  native  neighbors,  for  many 

T0°ikkey  Years  I  harbored  certain  interesting  aliens  for  pur- 
poses of  study.  These  were  monkeys  and  parrots, 
for  which  the  climate  of  California  is  fairly  well 
adapted.  Bob  was  the  first  and  cleverest  of  my 
monkey  people  —  that  is,  we  called  him  Bob.  His 
real  name  we  never  knew;  it  was  lost  in  the  jungles 
of  Borneo.  But  as  I  long  ago  told  his  story1  for 
naturalists  and  for  children,  it  need  not  be  repeated 
here.  Concerning  the  others  of  his  kin  who  came 
after,  a  few  words  will  suffice. 

One  little  ailing  Cercopithecus,  a  member  of  Bob's 
tribe,  was  given  the  run  of  the  warm  furnace  room, 
which  he  shared  with  two  kittens.  Of  these  he  be- 
came very  fond,  often  sitting  with  an  arm  around 
each  until  they  grew  too  big  for  him.  And  when  his 
food  was  brought,  he  always  carefully  laid  before 
them  some  delectable  morsel  such  as  a  cold  potato 
or  a  raw  carrot !  These  they  finally  came  to  accept 

1  "The  Story  of  Bob";  The  American  Naturalist*  1892.  Reprinted  in 
"The  Book  of  Knight  and  Barbara." 


1893]  Interesting  Aliens 

—  though  not  enthusiastically  —  while  he   in  turn 
learned  to  lap  up  milk  cat-fashion. 

All  of  my  simian  wards  were  human  in  their  long-  Maternal 
ing  for  companionship.  One  big  female  grabbed  a 
passing  kitten  and  made  off  with  it  to  the  top  of 
the  barn.  From  that  point  of  vantage  she  was  dis- 
lodged with  difficulty  after  an  hour  or  so,  during 
which  she  hugged  the  whimpering  little  beast  to  her 
monkey  heart.  At  another  time  she  adopted  a 
young  motherless  chick,  and  as  night  came  on  would 
carefully  lift  and  place  it  out  of  reach  behind  her 
in  a  snug  corner  of  the  old  dog  house  where  she 
slept.  At  sharing  her  food,  however,  she  drew  the 
line  —  gently  but  firmly  removing  her  charge  to  a 
satisfactory  distance  at  dinner  time. 

Still  another,  a  male  who  maintained  a  more  or 
less  mutually  aggressive  relation  with  our  Great 
Dane  dog,  would  when  attached  to  the  latter' s 
collar  by  a  chain  ride  around,  contentedly  on  his 
back.  This  amusement  ended  in  a  near-tragedy,  A 
for  one  day  when  the  carriage  left  in  haste  to  meet 
a  train,  the  dog  went,  too;  so  perforce  did  the  rider, 
but  not  keeping  his  hold.  We  understood  afterward 
that  the  scene  was  lamentable,  but  only  at  the 
station  was  the  situation  uncovered  to  the  coach- 
man, who  brought  the  monkey  back  on  the  front 
seat,  considerably  the  worse  for  wear,  his  eyes  elo- 
quent with  reproach. 

Of  the  parrots  our  special  joy  was  "Loro  Bonito," 
a  yellowhead,  from  Mazatlan.  When  first  presented  Bonito 
to  my  wife,  he  was  able  to  imitate  with  a  good  deal 
of  exactness  the  fife  and  drum  of  his  home  presidio. 
This  accomplishment  he  soon  lost,  however,  and 
with  it  ultimately  all  his  Spanish;  but  he  mean- 


The  Days  of  a  Man  [1893 

while  picked  up  a  good  deal  of  English.  From  an 
Irish  maid  he  learned  to  sing  with  strong  Hibernian 
accent : 

I'm  called  Little  Buttercup,  sweet  Little  Buttercup, 
Though  I  could  never  tell  whoy! 

At  the  "Stanford  yell"  of  those  days,  with  its 
eiSht  "rahs>"  he  worked  hard,  but  for  a  long  time 
without  arithmetical  precision.  One  day,  however, 
when  the  University  was  rejoicing  at  the  lifting  of 
a  great  cloud,  he  listened  intently  to  the  reiterated 
student  shout,  the  old 

Rah,  rah,  rah, 
Rah,  rah,  rah, 

Rah,  rah, 

Stanford ! 

and  from  then  on  kept  the  count  perfectly.  Sitting 
in  the  sunshine  at  the  end  of  a  great  oak  limb,  he 
took  special  joy  in  shrieking  out  the  staccato  lines 
again  and  again. 

One  Guatemala  parrot  with  a  green  head  never 
learned  to  speak  but  was  greatly  interested  in 
Coloratura  music.  Left  alone  in  the  room  with  the  graphophone 
duets  playing  coloratura  selections,  he  would  strike  the 
key  and  keep  up  a  creditable  running  accompani- 
ment of  his  own.  Occasionally  losing  the  note,  he 
would  tfren  break  out  into  a  most  discordant  squawk, 
with  which  in  fact  he  generally  closed  his  perform- 
ance. Another  bird  of  the  same  species  (owned  by 
a  little  girl  from  Guatemala)  would  solemnly  repeat 
long  Latin  responses  from  the  Mass,  winding  up 
gayly  with  "  Vamos  a  los  toros."  1 

To  the  garden  recently  came  two  new  tenants 

1  "Let's  go  to  the  bullfight." 

r  516  3 


1893]  Uninvited  Guests 

less  exotic  than  the  monkey  and  the  parrot,  but  Furry 
by  no  means  indigenous  to  California.     The  one,  invaders 
the   Bayou    Gray  Squirrel  —  Sciurus  fuliginosus  — 
seems   like  all   his   brethren  to   need  an  audience, 
and  watches  the  spectator  as  though  craving  ad- 
miration.    Between  him  and  the  cats  there  rages  a 
perpetual    feud;     the    woodpeckers    also    on    their 
intermittent  returns  feel  outraged  by  his  raid  upon 
their  storehouse  in  the  big  oak,  and  scold  vocifer- 
ously over  his  intrusion. 

The  Silver  Squirrel  of  California  —  Sciurus  doug- 
lasi  —  the  largest  and  handsomest  of  our  members 
of  the  tribe,  is  a  shy  animal,  unfortunately,  and 
never  leaves  his  haunts  in  the  upland  forests.  Our 
new  friend  belongs  no  doubt  to  the  overflow  from 
Golden  Gate  Park  in  San  Francisco,  where  his 
sociable  species  has  been  acclimated  and  whence  it 
is  now  making  its  way  down  the  Peninsula.1 

The  other  newcomer,  the  Opossum,  is  a  beast  of 
very  different  disposition,  sullen  in  temper  and 
skulking  about  by  night,  as  he  has  no  love  for  man 
and  no  human  trait  beyond  a  taste  for  chickens. 
Man  in  return  finds  him  good  only  when  properly 
roasted,  "Maryland  style";  under  these  circum- 
stances he  has  much  the  flavor  of  a  sucking  pig. 
Native  throughout  the  Southern  states,  this  inter- 
esting creature  is  finding  for  himself  a  congenial 
home  in  our  region,  to  which  some  one  has  pur- 
posely brought  him  with  an  eye  to  future  "possum 
roasts/' 

1  With  all  forms  of  this  type,  as  well  as  some  others  in  America,  certain 
individuals  are  melanistic  glossy  black  throughout,  and  exceedingly  handsome. 
Our  first  squirrel  visitors  were  all  black. 

CSI73 


The  Days  of  a  Man  £1894 


In  the  course  of  the  summer  of  1894  we  made  a 
delightful  trip  by  carriage  from  Ukiah  in  Mendocino 
County  to  Eureka  in  Humboldt,  where  I  gave  two 
or  three  lectures.  At  Vichy  Springs  above  Ukiah, 
a  resort  standing  in  a  class  by  itself,  we  stopped  for 
a  night,  principally  for  a  delicious  "Apollinaris" 
bath  in  its  hot  carbonated  water.  On  this  run  we 
happily  had  with  us  Dr.  Thoburn,  a  keen-eyed 
naturalist  as  well  as  warm-hearted  moralist.  The 
long  drive  through  giant  forests  of  undisturbed  red- 
woods was  especially  impressive.  Unluckily  much 
of  that  magnificent  timber  has  been  cut  away,  and 

Save  the     a  "Save  the  Redwoods"  movement  is  becoming  a 

Redwoods    vjtai  jssue  m  northern  California. 

In  our  section  of  the  state  we  have  been  more 
fortunate.  The  grove  near  Felton,  already  de- 
scribed, has  long  been  protected  as  a  forest  resort. 

The  Big  And  in  1902  it  was  my  privilege  to  help  Governor 
Henry  T.  Gage  decide  in  favor  of  a  bill  authorizing 
the  purchase,  as  a  state  park,  of  the  Big  Basin,  a 
superb  redwood  forest  at  the  head  of  Boulder  Creek 
in  Santa  Cruz  County,  an  area  covering  about  3800 
acres  of  undisturbed  woodland.  On  the  enthusiastic 
initiation  of  the  Sempervirens  Club,  including  such 
active  beauty  lovers  as  Father  Kenna,  president  of 
Santa  Clara  College,  Andrew  P.  Hill  of  San  Jose, 
Josephine  McCracken  of  Santa  Cruz,  and  Professor 
Dudley,  the  bill  in  question  had  been  duly  introduced 
and  passed  by  the  state  legislature.  Yet  the  gov- 
ernor hesitated.  Another  meritorious  forestry  meas- 
ure, providing  for  certain  investigations,  also  awaited 

1:5183 


1894]  Forest  Reserves 

his  signature.  Meanwhile  the  condition  of  the  state 
treasury  was  such  that  he  felt  obliged  to  make  a 
choice  between  the  two.  Having  been  called  in  to 
give  my  advice,  I  suggested  that  the  investigations 
could  wait;  while,  on  the  other  hand,  any  delay 
in  connection  with  the  proposed  forest  might  be 
fatal.  My  argument  won  the  day;  the  Big  Basin 
was  accordingly  purchased,  officially  rechristened  as 
the  California  Redwood  Park,  and  later  enlarged  to  California 
10,000  acres  or  about  fifteen  square  miles  under  the  &d™>od 
supervision  of  Charles  B.  Wing,1  the  leading  worker. 
That  term  I  use  with  deliberation,  for  besides  the 
time  and  labor  necessarily  involved  in  general  ad- 
ministration, the  professor  must  periodically  marshal 
his  volunteer  student  clans,  and  rush  over  to  fight 
the  disastrous  fires  which  each  fall  menace  his  beau- 
tiful forest. 

From  1904  to  1908  it  was  my  pleasure  to  assist  The 
an  ardent  mountain  lover,  Mr.  S.  C.  Hain  of  Tres  p_™naclgs 
Pinos,  in  securing  for  the  people  as  a  Government 
Forest  Reserve  a  singular  district  known  as  the 
"Pinnacles,"  lying  in  the  Gavilan  Range  on  the 
line  between  San  Benito  and  Monterey  counties. 
There  the  mountain  ridge  of  yellow  Miocene  sand- 
stone has  been  scored  into  deep  gulches  worn  by 
the  long  action  of  small  streams  unaided  by  frost 
or  ice.  These  cuts  are  very  narrow  and  irregular, 
scarcely  widened  even  at  the  top,  and  the  cliffs 
assume  varied  fantastic  and  picturesque  forms.  The 
forests  are  of  little  consequence,  being  of  scant  oaks 
and  digger  pines;  but  many  rare  flowers  are  found 
in  the  tract,  and  some  of  the  precipitous  walls  bear 
nests  of  the  great  California  condor  —  Gymnogyps 

1  See  also  Chapter  xvm,  page  442. 

1:519] 


The  Days  of  a  Man  £1894 

—  a  majestic  vulture  with  wing  spread  of  from  nine 
to  ten  feet. 

lake  During  the  summer  of  1894  we  nad  another  fine 

Tabof  outing  which  took  us  to  Lake  Tahoe,  the  scene  of 
some  of  my  fishing  in  1880.  This  magnificent  body 
of  water,  very  deep,  very  clear,  and  very  cold, 
about  twenty-five  miles  long  by  twelve  wide,  is  the 
jewel  of  the  Sierra.  Our  first  stop  was  at  Emerald 
Bay,  an  exquisite  inlet  below  a  pretty  waterfall; 
our  next  at  Glen  Alpine  Springs,  higher  up  in  the 
range,  above  the  beautiful  pine-embowered  Fallen 
Leaf  Lake,  a  deep  basin  walled  in  strikingly  by  high 
glacial  moraines.  Glen  Alpine  itself  is  a  rugged, 
rock-bound  valley  with  a  fine  carbonated  spring. 
From  there  we  climbed  Mount  Tallac,  which  rises 
as  a  frost-bitten  precipice  on  the  side  toward  Tahoe, 
but  offers  a  long,  even  slope  behind.  Its  summit 
commands  superb  and  unusual  views  —  on  the  one 
hand  the  broad  blue  expanse  of  the  great  lake  far 
Desolation  below,  on  the  other  Desolation  Valley,  most  ap- 
v alley  and  propriatelv  named,  an  amazing  wilderness  of  bare 

Heather         £    i-    i         j>  •  i  i        r»  •  j    r»      i 

Lake  slicken    granite,  nobly  crowned  by  Pyramid  Peak; 

and  in  the  green  intervening  area  a  score  of  small, 
sparkling,  sapphire-colored  tarns.  Of  these,  Heather 
Lake  —  the  highest  and  most  picturesque  —  lies 
near  timber  line. 

One  day  Mrs.  Jordan  (on  horseback)  and  I  (on 
foot)  made  the  circuit  of  the  glen,  taking  a  wide 
detour  around  on  the  southern  ridge  over  to  Deso- 
lation, then  along  and  beyond  the  head  of  Heather, 
returning  to  the  springs  by  the  ragged  north  wall, 
at  that  time  well-nigh  inaccessible  for  horses.  This 
was  one  of  the  most  trying  trips  I  have  ever  under- 
taken, and  the  pony,  mountain-bred  though  he  was, 

C  520  ] 


1894]  The  Tahoe  Region 

clearly  expressed  his  resolve  never  to  be  caught  that 
way  again. 

At  the  inn  one  evening  I  was  trying  to  explain 
to  some  acquaintances  the  geological  origin  of  the 
glacial  lakes  around.  But  Tahoe  did  not  well  fit 
into  my  story,  in  the  course  of  which  a  vigorous, 
roughly  dressed  young  fellow,  just  in  from  a  hard 
pull  over  the  Divide,  took  a  seat  at  the  dining  table. 
After  a  little  he  modestly  explained  that  the  ancient  The 
and  deep  valley  of  the  Truckee  River  now  holding 
the  great  lake  was  at  some  time  blocked  at  its  outlet 
by  a  long  dyke  of  lava  which  formed  a  permanent 
dam  near  Tahoe  City.  The  polite  and  intelligent 
frontiersman  I  soon  found  to  be  Waldemar  Lindgren 
of  the  United  States  Geological  Survey,  one  of  the 
highest  authorities  on  economic  geology.  Later  he 
became  an  acting  professor  on  our  own  staff  at 
Stanford. 

The  superb  mountain  region  southwest  of  Tahoe 
is  not  so  well  known  as  it  deserves  to  be,  although 
in  these  days  the  automobile  has  penetrated  to 
many  a  California  fastness.  But  one  stretch  of 
road  can  scarcely  have  been  made  available  for 
motorists  even  now.  This  leads  from  Rubicon  up  and 
Springs  (at  the  head  of  Rubicon  River,  a  branch  of  °^ckbound 
the  Middle  Fork  of  the  American)  almost  perpen- 
dicularly up  and  over  the  bare  slicken  granite  of  the 
Rockbound  Range,  a  continuation  of  Desolation 
Valley.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  the  approach  to  the 
Rubicon  from  McKinney's  on  the  Lake  over  the 
narrow  and  bony  Continental  Divide  must  still 
daunt  the  chauffeur.  But  the  way  up  Rockbound 
- 1  ought  not  to  call  it  a  road  —  is  or  was  the  most 

C  521  3 


'The  Days  of  a  Man  £1894 

difficult  in  my  highly  varied  experience  with 
mountain  vehicles. 

At  Truckee  I  had  secured  an  old  stagecoach  and 
two  very  strong  horses.  Besides  Mrs.  Jordan  and 
myself  the  party  consisted  of  four  young  student 
friends:  Miss  Bonnie  Burckhalter,  now  Mrs.  F.  A. 
Fletcher;  Miss  Milnora  Roberts;  her  brother,  Milnor 
Roberts,  now  dean  of  the  School  of  Mines  in 
the  University  of  Washington;  and  Dennis  Searles, 
a  favorite  among  the  "Pioneers,"  lately  deceased. 

Rubicon  Springs,  a  fine  carbonated  fountain,  lies 
in  a  beautiful,  deep,  upland  dale  overshadowed  by 
Circuit  the  barren  mass  of  Rockbound.  •  Over  the  wall  is 
Td£k*  Wentworth's,  a  similar  spring,  in  the  edge  of  a 
pine  woods.  From  there  a  run  of  two  or  three  days 
through  the  great  forest  behind  Pyramid  Peak 
brought  us  to  the  long  slope  leading  down  to  Straw- 
berry Valley  on  the  South  Fork  of  the  American 
River  in  Eldorado  County.  Thence,  by  a  good  road, 
we  crossed  the  low  divide  to  the  Upper  Truckee, 
which  we  then  followed  down  to  the  lake. 

Of  the  many  long  excursions  off  the  beaten  track 
which  Mrs.  Jordan  and  I  enjoyed  before  the  auto- 
mobile came  into  general  use,  this  was  one  of  the 
finest.  But  as  my  wife  is  passionately  fond  of  out- 
of-doors  and  I  myself  find  the  greatest  relaxation 
"on  the  road,"  I  often  arranged  picturesque  driving 
trips,  long  or  short,  frequently  in  connection  with 
lecturing  or  other  business  about  the  state;  usually 
—  and  always  for  the  longer  jaunts  —  we  induced 
a  few  like-minded  friends  to  accompany  us.  In 
this  way  we  went  through  Lake  County  two  or 
three  times,  making  on  one  occasion  a  "sentimental 
journey"  to  Silverado,  from  which  Stevenson  wrote 


1894]  The  Calaveras  Grove 

so  delightfully  in  the  "Silverado  Squatters."  It 
was  at  that  time,  also,  I  think,  that  we  spent  a  night 
at  the  beautiful  Clear  Lake  home  of  Captain  and 
Mrs.  Collier,  whose  daughter  Sarah  entered  Stan- 
ford with  the  Pioneer  Class. 

Another  charming  trip  took  us  from  Valley  Spring  ne  Bret 
to  the  Calaveras  Big  Trees,  the  earliest  known  of  Harte 

11      i        r«  i  •  i  country 

all  the  Sequoia  groves  and  very  impressive,  thence 
through  the  classical  Bret  Harte  country  to  the 
lava-smothered  mesa  of  Table  Mountain,  the  home 
of  "Truthful  James,"  and  to  Angel's  Camp,  the 
seat  of  the  Geological  "Society  upon  the  Stanislow" 
and  the  abode  of  "the  Bell-Ringer  of  Angel's."  At 
the  Calaveras  Big  Trees  we  found  their  owner,  Job 
Whiteside,  hoping  to  induce  the  Federal  Govern- 
ment to  meet  his  price  for  the  property.  In  that 
case  another  noble  and  irreplaceable  forest  would 
be  permanently  preserved  for  the  people  —  a  matter 
in  which  the  Sierra  Club,  an  active  group  of  nature 
lovers  and  mountaineers,  and  the  Native  Daughters 
of  the  Golden  West  have  exerted  themselves,  but  so 
far  without  avail.  Several  years  later,  accompanied 
by  Professor  and  Mrs.  Edward  C.  Franklin,  delight- 
ful associates,  we  renewed  acquaintance  with  the 
Calaveras  Grove,  and  then  drove  up  the  fine  gorge 
of  the  North  Fork  of  the  Stanislaus,  tracing  the 
stream  practically  to  its  very  source  in  Alpine 
County. 

Again,    companioned    by    my    daughter    Edith,  Piumas 
Milnor  Roberts,  Vernon  Kellogg,,  and,  for  a  couple  County 
of  days,  young  Copeland,  son  of  my  old  friend,  we 
drove  from  Chico  up  the  fine  Feather  River  Canyon 
into  Piumas  County  as  far  as  Quincy  and  back.    On 
this  trip  we  climbed  Lassen's  Butte,  10,020  feet,  a 

C  523  3 


The  Days  of  a  Man  £1894 


Lassen's 
Butte 


volcano  with  a  small  crater  at  the  summit,  still  hot 
and  erupting  at  times.  Though  previously  quiescent 
for  half  a  century,  Mount  Lassen  has  again  become 
intermittently  violent,  several  considerable  outbreaks 
having  taken  place  within  the  last  decade.  Some 
fifty  years  ago  an  overflow  of  lava  down  the  east 
side  blocked  a  stream  and  formed  a  small  lake  in 
the  forest.  Out  of  it  the  smothered  trees  still  rise 
gaunt  and  naked  from  the  water.  Below  the  Butte 
on  the  south  side,  a  small  geyser  basin,  locally 
known  as  "Bumpus*  Hell,"  has  been  produced  by 
the  contact  of  underground  streams  with  hot  rocks. 
Near  by  is  Vinegar  Lake,  a  large,  very  sour  pond 
impregnated  with  sulphurous  acid. 


An 

inclusive 
memoir  on 
American 
fishes 


During  the  whole  of  1894,  as  well  as  in  the  four 
preceding  years,  I  gave  all  my  available  time  — 
that  is,  all  not  demanded  by  the  University  or  by 
outside  lectures  —  to  the  most  extensive  and  the 
most  trying  of  my  scientific  writings,  "The  Fishes 
of  North  and  Middle  America."  l  This  work  I  had 
begun  in  1889  in  Bloomington,  at  Dr.  Goode's 

1  DEDICATED   TO   THE    MEMORY 
OF 

THOSE  ICHTHYOLOGISTS  OF  THE  PAST 

WHO  HAVE  STUDIED 
AMERICAN  FISHES  IN  AMERICA 

IN  TOKEN  OF 

"THE  ONLY  REWARD  THEY  ASKED  — 
A  GRATEFUL  REMEMBRANCE  OF  THEIR  WORK*' 

Here  followed  a  list  of  fifty-one  pioneer  naturalists.  "Middle"  instead 
of  ."Central"  America  was  adopted  as  a  more  logical  term,  at  the  request 
of  Dr.  Goode.  The  same  phraseology  was  also  used  by  Ridgway  for  his 
corresponding  treatise  on  birds. 


1896]  Fishes  of  North  and  Middle  America 

urgent  insistence.  It  involved  great  strain  upon 
my  far-sighted  eyes,  already  fatigued  by  earlier  work 
and  naturally  becoming  more  presbyopic  with  age. 

Moreover,  I  had  only  recently  begun  to  wear 
glasses  which  I  should  have  put  on  some  years 
before,  for  it  was  not  until  about  that  time  that 
Dr.  George  M.  Gould's  persistent  warnings  in  regard 
to  eyestrains  first  came  to  my  attention.  I  was  then 
particularly  impressed  by  his  account  of  the  phys- 
ical disabilities  of  many  scientific  workers  (notably 
of  Darwin  and  Huxley)  arising  from  lack  of  ocular 
adjustments. 

Seeing  little  prospect  of  completing  the  task,  I 
reluctantly  proposed  to  publish  merely  the  first 
half  of  Volume  I,  that  is,  the  soft-rayed  fishes  up 
to  and  including  the  sea-horses.  But  Mr.  Hopkins  Good 
now  came  to  my  assistance,  furnishing  means  by  helpers 
which  I  could  enlist  the  aid  of  Dr.  Evermann  as 
joint  author.  At  the  same  time,  Erank  Cramer,  an 
able  graduate  student,  generously  volunteered  his 
services,  as  did  also  Thoburn  and  Meek.  The  work 
appeared  in  four  volumes,  the  first  in  March,  1896, 
the  second  and  third  in  1898,  the  fourth  in  1900. 
In  it  we  gave  descriptions  of  all  the  fishes  known  in 
America  north  of  the  Isthmus  —  3127  species,  ar- 
ranged in  1077  genera  and  224  families. 

Meanwhile,  during  the  two  years  and  more  of  the  University 
Government   Suit,   I  gave  lectures  on  educational  extenswn 
subjects   in   all  the   principal  towns  of  the   state, 
largely  with  the  view  of  making  as  many  new  friends 
as  possible  for  the  University,  against  the  critical 
time    approaching.      One    of   my    most    successful 
courses  was  that  given  in  San  Francisco  on  "The 
Factors  of  Organic  Evolution."    These  I  set  forth  in 


The  Days  of  a  Man  £1894 

plain  and  intelligible  fashion  without  effort  at 
"The  argument  or  propaganda.  My  address  on  "The 
Physical  physical  Basis  of  Heredity"  developed  a  point  of 

Basis  of          .  J  i  r 

Heredity"  view  almost  unknown  even  to  those  of  my  hearers 
who  had  tried  to  keep  up  with  current  discoveries. 
Its  chief  quality,  highly  praised  at  the  time,  lay  in 
bringing  abstruse  conceptions  into  line  with  the 
common  knowledge  of  educated  people. 

Collecting  At  the  close  of  1894,  for  the  first  time  since  our 
arr^va'  at  Stanford,  I  found  opportunity  to  resume 
field  work  in  Zoology.  In  December  my  wife  and 
I  went  on  an  expedition  to  Mazatlan,  the  port  of 
the  state  of  Sinaloa  on  the  west  coast  of  Mexico, 
almost  directly  opposite  the  tip  of  Lower  California. 
Two  assistants,  George  B.  Culver  and  Edwin  C. 
Starks,  accompanied  us,  as  well  as  five  other  stu- 
dents, Thomas  M.  Williams,  Frank  H.  Lamb, 
Norman  B.  Scofield,  James  A.  Richardson,  and 
George  L.  Seward,  all  volunteer  helpers.  This  trip, 
the  scientific  side  of  which  was  financed  by  the 
further  bounty  of  Timothy  Hopkins,  resulted  in 
large  and  valuable  collections,  including  much  that 
was  new  to  science;  and  under  the  title,  "The  Fishes 
of  Sinaloa,"  I  published  a  description  of  all  the 
material  obtained.  In  connection  with  this  and 
later  expeditions  of  the  same  kind  carried  on  under 
the  auspices  of  the  Hopkins  Marine  Station,  a  series 
of  specimens  was  each  time  sold  to  the  British 
Museum  and  the  Museum  of  Vienna,  thus  creating 
a  revolving  fund  for  further  explorations. 

The  situation  of  Mazatlan  is  singularly  pictur- 
esque. The  narrow  harbor,  sheltered  by  tall,  craggy 
islands  of  varying  form  and  size,  opens  near  a  noble 
beach,  "Las  Olas  Altas"  —  the  high  waves  — 

C  526] 


1895]  Sinaloa 


constantly  pounded  by  the  great  surf  of  the  sea. 
Tidepools  abound  along  the  rocky  shores;  in  them 
a  multitude  of  little  creatures  find  place  among  the 
pink  corallines  and  other  colorful  seaweeds.  Some- 
thing of  the  charm  of  the  place  I  tried  to  indicate 
in  a  poem  written  during  our  stay  there. 

SINALOA 


I  dream  of  gray  rocks  rising  rough  and  sheer 
Above  the  trembling  azure  of  the  sea; 
Of  long  green  lines  of  waves  that  listlessly 
Break  in  slow  foam,  then  slip  away  in  fear  — 
Or  hide  themselves  in  rock-pools,  crystal  clear. 

I  dream  of  long  white  paths  that  from  the  sea 

Climb  the  gray  Mother  Range  unwillingly 

Through  straggling  ranks  of  palms  and  pines  austere 

To  lands  of  Summer  where  slow  days  go  by, 

Each  as  it  must,  but  most   reluctantly; 

Of  black  mantillas  that  but  seem  to  hide 

Dark  eyes  undarkened  by  the  darkest  night. 

All  this  my  dream  —  but  ever  by  my  side 

Thou  with  the  midnight  eyes  by  love  made  bright. 

ii 

We  stand  tonight  on  an  enchanted  shore; 
The  warm,  slow  pulse  of  the  great  Summer  Sea 
Rises  and  falls  the  night  long,  ceaselessly, 
Beating  its  one  grand  rhythm  evermore. 
See  where  before  us  the  stark  moonlight  falls 
On  Isla  Blanca's  bare  volcanic  walls  — 
Some  shapeless  monster  breaking  from  the  deep, 
Lashing  the  waves  in  rising  from  his  sleep! 
Yonder  in  open  ocean,  hand  in  hand, 
In  solemn  row,  the  three  Venados  stand, 
Vast  and  impossible  in  moonbeams  white, 
As  they  were  "Flying  Islands  of  the  Night." 

C  527] 


The  Days  of  a  Man 


Here  Cerro  Cruz  her  iron  cross  uplifts, 
Triumphant  over  her  resistant  cliffs; 
Beside  her  armed  Vijia,  dim  and  dun, 
Guarding  the  harbor  with  her  single  gun; 
Low  at  their  feet,  half  hid  in  sea-mists  gray, 
Shine  far  the  four  stars  of  the  Cross  of  May; 
Beyond  the  headland  with  its  palm  tree  lone, 
Flashes  the  beacon-light  of  tall  Creston  — 
The  last  and  haughtiest  of  the  craggy  horde 
Sierra  Madre  thrusts  forth  oceanward. 

Behind  us  lies  the  town  in  slumber  deep, 
And  all  unrestless  —  as  to  thee  and  me 
Man  and  his  strivings  now  had  ceased  to  be, 
Or  by  some  spell  were  bound  in  endless  sleep, 
Leaving  us  only  on  enchanted  ground, 
Alone  together,  where  there  comes  no  sound 
Save  the  slow  pulse-throb  of  the  tropic  sea 
In  the  white  moonlight  beating  steadily. 

ill 

Perchance,  dear  heart,  it  may  be  thou  and  I, 
In  some  far  azure  of  infinity, 
Shall  find  together  an  enchanted  shore 
Where  Life  and  Death  and  Time  shall  be  no  more, 
Leaving  Love  only  and  Eternity. 
For  Love  shall  last,  though  all  else  pass  away, 
The  harsh  taskmaster  that  we  call  Today, 
Till  each  concession  Time  from  Life  has  wrung 
Like  outworn  garments  from  the  Soul  be  flung, 
And  it  shall  stand,  with  back  no  longer  bent, 
Slave  to  the  lash  of  its  environment! 
Then  this  great  earth  we  know  shall  shrink  at  last 
To  some  bare  Isla  Blanca  of  the  past  — 
A  rock  unnoted  in  the  boundless  sea 
Whose  solemn  pulse-beat  marks  Eternity. 

In  Mazatlan  we  made  several  new  friends,  among 
them  Mr.  and  Mrs.  William  W.  Felton  and  Dr. 
C  528  3 


1895]         Clean  and  Airy  Lodgings 

George  Warren  Rogers.     The  latter,  an  able  phy-  New 
sician,  had  fled  from  Vermont  to  recover  his  health  frifnds 
in  the  equable  climate  of  Sinaloa,  which  during  the 
clear,  rainless  winter  seems  absolutely  perfect.    The 
same  cannot  be  said,  however,  for  the  wet  and  sultry 
summer.    To  Dr.  Rogers  I  gave  a  copy  of  my  poem, 
of  which  he  made  a  Spanish  translation  afterward 
published   in   a  Mexican  journal.     Mr.    Felton,   a 
business  man  of  the  city,  and  his  excellent  wife  re- 
ceived us  frequently  in  their  hospitable  home. 

At  the  British  vice-consulate,  a  roomy  structure 
overlooking  the  tumultuous  Olas  Altas,  we  found 
adequate  quarters,  very  simple  but  clean  and  free 
from  the  typical  nocturnal  fauna  of  Mexico.  From 
our  land-side  windows  one  could  see  the  cemetery, 
with  its  monuments  serving  as  perches  for  a  grim 
array  of  scavenger  birds.  There  roosted  the  two 
species  of  vulture,  the  Turkey  Buzzard  and  the 
Carrion  Crow,  and  one  hawk,  the  $alele  or  caracara, 
which  has  adopted  the  vulture's  trade.  These  fowl  A 
in  black,  taken  in  connection  with  a  rusty  hinge  on  m&htmarf 
a  swinging  wooden  blind  of  the  Consulado,  inspired 
me  to  the  following  lines,  sufficiently  uncanny 
perhaps  to  be  inserted  here,  though  with  an  apology 
to  my  readers: 

I  had  a  dream  of  roses  in  their  bloom 
Casting  their  petals  ever  on  the  grass 
Over  the  way  the  beautiful  must  pass  — 
When  suddenly  there  rose  o'er  their  perfume 
A  sense  of  vultures  sitting  on  my  tomb 
In  grand  impossible  conventicle, 
Debarring  me  from  entering  its  cell.  t 

"Aha,  my  soul,"  I  cried,  "is  this  thy  doom? 
An  errant  derelict  on  seas  of  gloom, 

C  529  3 


The  Days  of  a  Man  £1895 

While  round  about  thee,  long  as  death  shall  be, 
Thou  hear'st  strange  voices,  ghastly  shriek  and  twinge, 
Thje  grisly  horror  of  a  rusty  hinge?" 

love  and  At  Mazatlan  also  I  wrote  a  poem  l  to  my  little 
science  daughter  Barbara,  which  I  called  a  study  in  heredity. 
For  in  it  I  sought  to  trace  the  origin  of  the  black 
eyes  she  had  inherited  from  her  mother  and  grand- 
father Knight,  but  which,  I  felt  sure,  must  have 
descended  from  a  racial  source  outside  of  or  back 
of  my  wife's  New  England  ancestry.  I  therefore 
imagined  that  some  forgotten  rover  from  San 
Sebastian  in  Spain  had  joined  his  blood  to  that  of 
the  Puritan  folk.  As  a  matter  of  fact  I  later  learned 
that  the  black  eyes  and  olive  skin  went  back  through 
the  Knight-Worden  line  to  a  Huguenot  maid  and 
her  father,  who  fled  from  France  to  England  to 
escape  religious  persecution. 

To  BARBARA 

» 

Little  lady,  cease  your  play 
For  a  moment,  if  you  may; 
Come  to  me,  and  tell  me  true 
Whence  those  black  eyes  came  to  you. 

Father's  eyes  are  granite  gray, 
And  your  mother's,  Barbara, 
Black  as  the  obsidian  stone, 
With  a  luster  all  their  own. 
How  should  one  so  small  as  you 
Learn  to  choose  between  the  two? 

* 

If  through  father's  eyes  you  look, 
Nature  seems  an  open  book  — 
All  her  secrets  written  clear 
On  her  pages  round  you,  dear. 
1  Published  in  The  Popular  Science  Monthly  for  August,  1895. 

£5303 


BARBARA  JORDAN,   1895 


1895]  A  Study  in  Heredity 


Better  yet  than  this  may  be 
If  through  mother's  eyes  you  see; 
Theirs  to  read  —  a  finer  art  — 
Deep  down  in  the  human  heart. 
How  should  one  so  small  as  you 
Choose  so  well  between  the  two? 

Hide  your  face  behind  your  fan, 
Little  black-eyed  Puritan; 
Peer  across  its  edge  at  me 
In  demurest  coquetry, 
Like  some  Dona  Placida, 
Not  the  Puritan  you  are. 
Subtle  sorcery  there  lies 
In  the  glances  of  your  eyes, 
Calling  forth,  from  out  the  vast 
Vaults  of  the  forgotten  past, 
Pictures  dim  and  far  away 
From  the  full  life  of  today, 
Like  the  figures  that  we  see 
Wrought  in  ancient  tapestry. 

This  the  vision  comes  to  me: 
Sheer  rock  rising  from  the  sea, 
Wind-riven,  harsh,  and  vertical, 
To  a  gray  old  castle  wall; 
Waving  palms  upon  its  height, 
At  its  feet  the  breakers  white 
Chasing  o'er  an  emerald  bay 
Like  a  flock  of  swans  that  play; 
Tile-roofed  houses  of  the  town 
From  the  hills,  slow-creeping  down; 
Rocks  and  palms  and  castle  wall, 
Emerald  seas  that  rise  and  fall, 
Golden  haze  and  glittering  blue  — 
What  is  all  of  this  to  you  ? 

Only  this,  perchance  it  be 
Each  has  left  its  trace  in  thee; 
Only  this,  that  Love  is  strong, 
And  the  arm  of  Fate  is  long. 


The  Days  of  a  Man  £1895 


Deeply  hidden  in  your  eyes, 
Undeciphered  histories 
Graven  in  the  ages  vast, 
Lie  there  to  be  read  at  last: 
Graven  deep,  they  must  be  true; 
Shall  I  read  them  unto  you? 

Once  a  man,  now  faint  and  dim 
With  the  centuries .  over  him, 
Wandered  from  an  ancient  town 
On  its  hills  slow-creeping  down; 
O'er  the  ocean,  bold  and  free, 
Roved  in  careless  errantry. 
With  Vizcaino  had  he  fared, 
And  his  strange  adventures  dared; 
Restless  ever,  drifting  on, 
Far  as  foot  of  man  had  gone; 
On  his  cheek  the  salt  that  clings 
To  the  Headland  of  the  Kings, 
Flung  from  the  enchanted  sea 
Of  Saint  Francis  Assisi! 
Rover  o'er  the  ocean  blue  — 
What  has  he  to  do  with  you? 

Only  this:   he  sailed  one  day 

To  your  Massachusetts  Bay, 

And  this  voyage  was  his  last, 

For  Love  seized  and  held  him  fast. 

Of  that  old  romance  of  his 

None  can  tell  you  more  than  this, — 

Saving  that,  as  legacies 

To  his  child,  he  left  his  eyes 

Black  as  the  obsidian  stone 

With  a  luster  all  their  own, 

Seeing  as  by  magic  ken 

Deep  into  the  hearts  of  men. 

And  mid  tides  of  changing  years, 

Dreams  and  hopes  and  cares  and  ffcars, 

Life  that  flows  and  ebbs  alway, 

Love  has  kept  them  loyally. 

£  532  3 


Local  Natural  History 


Once,  it  chanced,  they  came  to  shine 
Straight  into  this  heart  of  mine. 

Little  lady,  cease  your  play 
For  a  moment,  if  you  may; 
All  I  ask  is,  silently, 
Turn  your  mother's  eyes  on  me! 

Consulado  Ingles,  Calle  de  las  Olas  Altas,  Mazatlan,  Sinaloa 
January  10,  1895 

While  in  Mazatlan,  we  had  the  excellent  services 
of  a  mestizo  (halfbreed)  fisherman,  Ygnacio  Moreno 
by  name.  About  the  outlying  islands,  the  Venados 
especially,  as  well  as  in  the  hulk  of  a  French  man- 
of-war  sunk  long  since  in  the  harbor  by  a  hurricane, 
Ygnacio  exploded  dynamite  with  rich  results.  I 
must  here  explain  that  while  the  use  of  dynamite  is 
wisely  forbidden  to  fishermen  in  all  civilized  regions, 
a  special  license  for  scientific  purposes  was  granted 
us  by  the  local  authorities. 

One  day  as  we  were  drawing  a  seine  on  the  beach,  Ou 
idlers  crowded  around  and  began  to  grab  the  fish. 
Tom  Williams,  red-headed,  muscular  football  center, 
seized  a  young  fellow  by  the  shoulders  and  swung 
him  about  in  every  direction,  thus  effectually  dis- 
persing the  mob.  From  that  time  forward,  hangers- 
on  had  a  wholesome  fear  of  our  gringo  Colorado, 
"red  Yankee." 

On  the  tide  flats  beyond  the  Astillero  (estuary)  A 
gathered  a  marvelous  array  of  birds  —  long-legged  Pfrad*'se 

it  ,  J          ,  6       6&         of  birds 

waders,  herons  and  cranes,  and  swimmers  such  as 
pelicans,  cormorants,  gulls,  and  ducks,  besides  high- 
flying Tropic-birds  and  Frigates.  In  the  market 
several  varieties  of  parrots  were  on  sale.  The 
finest  one  we  saw,  "Loro  Bonito,"  introduced  in 

C  533  3 


The  Days  of  a  Man  [1895 

earlier  pages,  was  presented  to  us  by  Dr.  Rogers. 
The    smallest    of   them,    the    perroquitos,    scarcely 
larger  than  sparrows,  kept  up  a  soft,  minute  con- 
versation   among    themselves,     <(  povere    perroquito, 
perroquito  perro."     It  was  soon  remarked  that  we 
showed  much  interest  in  the  birds,  and  trade  began 
to  look  up.     Two  or  three  times  small  owls  even 
Good         were  offered  with  the  insistent  claim  that  they  were 
talkers       gOO(j  talkers,  "  hdbla  mucho"  "  he  talks  much/' 

The  woods  about  the  town  swarmed  with  small, 
bright  green  loritos  that  screamed  in  unison,  flying 
from  tree  to  tree.  Strolling  one  day  through  the 
deeper  forest,  we  found  monstrous  lizards  —  iguanas 
—  hibernating  in  hollow  trunks,  and  occasionally 
across  our  path  stalked  a  huge  tarantula  with  furry 
coat  of  brilliant  orange  and  black. 

In  Ygnacio's  family  lived  a  young  pelican  with 
broken  wing,  who  played  with  the  gamins  of  the 
street,  never  once  noticing  that  he  was  only  a  bird, 
not  a  boy  or  a  dog.  At  the  lighthouse  on  Creston 
we  made  the  acquaintance  of  a  domesticated  wild 
turkey-gobbler  trained  to  stand  patiently  on  your 
finger,  precisely  like  a  parrot,  until  his  heavy  weight 
forced  you  to  put  him  down. 

Hidden  At  Camarron,  a  lava  cliff  by  the  sea,  men  were 
treasure  digging  in  the  hard  rock  for  treasure  said  to  have 
been  hastily  buried  in  the  almost  impenetrable  stone 
by  some  early  corsair.  Their  operations  were 
directed,  we  understood,  by  a  fortune-teller  in  a 
shabby  boarding  house  on  Sacramento  Street,  San 
Francisco.  "A  sucker  is  born  every  hour." 

Parting  from  Ygnacio,  I  asked  him  to  suggest 
some  souvenir  which  we  might  send  him  from  Cali- 
fornia. An  "escopete,"  he  confessed,  was  what  his 


18953         Increased  Esprit  de  Corps 

soul  most  craved  —  a  long-barreled  muzzle-loading 
musket,  and  such  we  forwarded,  to  his  great  satis- 
faction, on  our  return  home. 

The  following  lines  were  offered  by  me  as  a  part- 
ing toast : 

Here's  to  you,  Ygnacio!  Tgnado's 

May  your  escopete  scatter  escopeu 

Far  and  wide:  it  does  not  matter 

If  a  single  shot  should  gather 

Half  the  ducks  in  Mexico! 


After  my  return  from  Sinaloa  the  financial  side  of 
university  administration  became  increasingly  ex- 
acting ;  yet  the  strain  of  this  period,  shared  as  it 
was  by  all,  stabilized  and  intensified  the  general 
esprit  de  corps.  This  fact  lent  a  special  quality  to 
the  Commencement  exercises  of  that  year,  the 
graduation  of  the  "  Pioneer  Class."  The  usual 
senior  reception,  for  instance,  was  given  by  the 
faculty  as  a  whole  at  their  request,  instead  of  by  the 
president  and  his  wife.  And  the  farewells,  always 
tinged  with  regret,  were  in  this  case  more  than 
ordinarily  touching.  Probably  in  no  other  institution 
of  the  size  had  the  relations  between  professors  and 
students  been  so  intimate  and  so  cordial  as  those 
which  prevailed  at  Stanford  University  during  the 
first  decade. 

The  strenuous  duties  of  the  academic  year,  in 
connection  with  continuous  scientific  work  which  I 
was  not  willing  to  abandon,  made  it  imperative,  as 
well  as  delightful,  to  seek  new  vigor  in  the  open 

C5353 


The  Days  of  a  Man  £1895 

whenever  possible,   and  in  the  long  vacations  we 

sometimes  wandered  far  afield.    During  the  summer 

rbe          of  this  year  we  had  two  fine  outings.    Leaving  home 

Yellow      jn  early  June,  we  first  visited  the  Yellowstone,  this 

stone  again      .  .  rr    •    \  \  i         • 

time  as  tourists,  not  as  official  explorers  having 
the  freedom  of  the  park.1  Nevertheless,  the  Upper 
Geyser  Basin,  with  Old  Faithful  and  his  colleagues, 
and  the  Great  Fall  of  the  Yellowstone  were  as 
impressive  as  before.  , 

Our  second  trip  was  to  Summit  Soda  Springs  on 
one  of  the  upper  sources  of  the  North  Fork  of  the 
American  River.  This  was  at  that  time  an  agree- 
able resort  —  a  small  -hotel  and  several  cabins 
grouped  about  a  fine  carbonated  spring  with  a  pretty 
waterfall  behind,  and  the  tall  pines  crowding  close. 
With  the  tiny  chipmunks,  always  eager  to  take 
advantage  of  chance  charities,  we  became  great 
Mountain  friends.  For  indeed  the  dwarf  mountain  forms  of 
chipmunks  ^jg  charming  beastic,  the  various  species  of  the 
Western  and  Asiatic  genus  —  Eutamias  —  are  live- 
lier and  more  sociable  than  the  one  Eastern  Tamias. 
To  me  they  are  more  interesting  also,  as  the  splitting 
into  many  species  of  Eutamias  perfectly  illustrates 
the  effects  of  isolation  and  localization,  every  sepa- 
rate mountain  forest  having  its  own  kind  which 
seldom  wanders  far,  and  therefore  does  not  mate 
with  cousins  even  only  a  little  removed.  They  thus 
offer  some  of  the  best  examples  of  what  I  have  called 
"geminate  species."  2 

Not  far  from  the  springs  rises  the  Devil's  Wood- 
P^e'  an  amazm£  dyke  of  perfect  basaltic  columns 
scarcely  less  remarkable  than  the  Giant's  Causeway 
in  Ireland  or  the  Repos  de  I'Aigle  in  Auvergne. 

1  See  Chapter  xiv,  page  337.          2  See  Chapter  xiv,  page  329.* 

E5363 


The  University  of  the  United  States 

While  in  Washington  during  the  Christmas  recess  A  national 
of  this  year,  I  was  asked  for  advice  in  a  matter  unwersity 
which  had  long  interested  me.    This  was  the  project 
for  a  national  university,   a  scheme  more  or  less 
under  consideration  ever  since  the  death  of  George 
Washington,  who  bequeathed  most  of  his  personal 
fortune  for  that  purpose.     Every  other  capital  of 
importance  except  London  has  such  an  institution, 
maintained    at    public    expense    and    serving    as    a 
center  of  scholarship  and  enlightenment.    Neverthe- 
less, whenever  a  concrete  plan  comes  before  Congress, 
it  is  blocked  for  one  reason  or  another.     But  during 
several  years  previous  to  1895,  Hon.  John  Wesley 
Hoyt,   ex-governor  of  Wyoming,   then   resident   in 
Washington,  had  devoted  his  energies  and  fortune  Hoyt's 
to    the    establishment    of  the    "University   of  the  efforts 
United   States."     Mr.   Hoyt's   efforts   met  with   a 
favorable  response  among  scholars  and  teachers  in 
general,   and   he   developed   a   strong   following  in 
Congress. 

From  my  point  of  view  the  arguments  in  favor 
of  the  proposed  university  were  many  and  incon- 
trovertible. 

At  Washington  are  centered  the  means  for  ad-  opportune 
vanced  studies  in  government,  economics,  and  sci-  H&s  f°r 

r          i        T  M  r  y^  i        n      •  i  •  research 

ence,  tor  the  Library  of  Congress,  the  Smithsonian, 
the  National  Museum,  the  Army  Medical  Museum, 
the  Geological  Survey,  the  Coast  and  Geodetic 
Survey,  the  Department  of  Agriculture  with  its 
various  bureaus,  the  Fish  Commission,  and  other 
scientific  establishments  furnish  material  for  ad- 
vanced research  without  a  parallel  in  the  world.  A 
university  faculty  consists  of  a  corps  of  men  who 
teach  as  well  as  investigate.  Thus  the  only  thing 

C  537  3 


T'he  Days  of  a  Man  £1895 

needed  to  make  a  great  university  at  Washington 
is  to  augment  and  coordinate  its  body  of  scholars, 
and  place  their  services  at  the  disposal  of  others. 
The  true  function  of  such  an  institution  does  not 
lie  in  the  conduct  of  examinations  or  the  granting 
of  academic  degrees.  It  should  fill  with  noble 
adequacy  the  place  which  the  graduate  schools  of 
our  present  universities  still  only  partially  occupy. 
In  so  doing  it  would  furnish  a  stimulus  to  all  similar 
work  throughout  the  land. 

influential  As  strong  advocates  of  the  movement  for  a 
advocates  national  university,  several  prominent  men  gave 
invaluable  aid  —  among  them  Andrew  D.  White, 
Gardiner  G.  Hubbard,  Alexander  Graham  Bell,  and 
Robert  Stein.  Of  White  and  his  educational  views 
I  have  already  written  at  length.  Mr.  Hubbard  was 
a  well-known  patron  of  science  and  letters,  his 
hospitable  and  beautiful  home  serving  as  the  liter- 
ary center  of  the  capital.  Dr.  Bell,  the  distinguished 
inventor,  is  a  son-in-law  of  Mr.  Hubbard ;  Dr.  Stein 
was  a  member  of  the  Geological  Survey  and  a 
scientist  of  high  standing  in  his  field.1 

In  Congress,  John  Sherman  of  Ohio,  one  of  the 

ablest  men  in  public  life  and  then  chairman  of  the 

Senate   Committee  on   Education,   took  an   active 

Argument    lead.     At  his  request  I  appeared  before  the  com- 

before  the    mjttee  to  present  in  detail  the  arguments  for  the 

Senate  •  i  •         •  t  •   i 

scheme  and  to  answer  various  objections  which 
had  been  raised  against  it.  The  chief  of  these 
(though  one  not  often  frankly  acknowledged)  seemed 

1  In  view  of  our  cooperation  at  that  time,  Dr.  Stein,  while  engaged  in 
coordinating  and  mapping  Arctic  surveys,  gave  (1897)  the  name  of  Jordan 
Island  to  a  large  three-peaked  mass  in  Hubbard  Bay  on  the  middle  of  the 
west  coast  of  Greenland. 

H  S38II 


1895]      Plea  for  a  National  University 

to  be  a  phase  of  academic  rivalry  on  the  part  of 
Columbia,  and  to  some  extent  of  Harvard;  it  was 
feared,  perhaps,  that  government  competition  might 
diminish  the  relative  prestige  of  those  distinguished 
institutions. 

The  principal  argument  openly  advanced  was 
that  a  national  university  would  surely  become  a 
political  football.  To  me,  that  idea  seemed  patently 
absurd.  An  associated  group  of  real  scholars  at 
the  center  of  legislation  would  no  doubt  affect  scholars 
politics,  but  the  men  themselves  would  be  above 
partisan  influences,  and  no  unworthy  appointee 
could  maintain  himself  in  such  a  position.  No 
other  body,  moreover,  is  so  resistant  to  coercion  or 
contamination  as  a  university  faculty. 

The  few  scholars  and  investigators  now  in  the 
Washington  bureaus  have  an  authority  far  beyond 
that  of  their  official  position.  In  the  force  of  high 
training  and  devotion  to  truth,  we  find  the  key  to 
the  immense  influence  formerly  exerted  on  our 
government  by  Henry,  Baird,  and  Goode.  Of  such 
men  are  universities  made,  and  until  we  have  a 
genuine  national  university  devoted  to  the  highest 
learning  and  most  profound  investigation,  we  cannot 
say  that  we  have  truly  a  national  capital. 

Later,  at  a  meeting  of  the  National  Education 
Association  in  Los  Angeles,  the  general  objections 
to  the  project  were  plausibly  presented  by  Dr. 
Nicholas  Murray  Butler,  then  professor  of  Phi- 
losophy and  Education  at  Columbia,  afterward 
(1902)  president  of  that  institution.  Having  been 
previously  asked  to  present  the  positive  side,  I 
followed  with  the  substance  of  the  plea  I  had  made 
before  the  Senate  Committee. 

C  539  3 


The  Days  of  a'  Man  [1895 

Congress,  I  believe,  would  in  time  have  acted 
favorably  had  it  not  been  for  the  confusion  of  new 
issues  incident  to  the  war  with  Spain. 

In  the  fall  of  1895  I  was  elected  president  of  the 
California  Academy  of  Sciences.  This  useful  in- 
stitution, dating  from  the  earliest  'so's,  struggled  on 
for  years  with  inadequate  support  until  endowed 
by  James  Lick  in  1876.  Its  funds  were  then  mainly 
invested  in  a  large  office  building  in  San  Francisco, 
the  museum  occupying  cramped  quarters  at  the 
Faction  in  rear.  For  some  time  previous  to  my  election  the 
science  academy  membership  had  been  divided  into  two 
warring  factions  —  one  led  by  Dr.  Davidson,  the 
other  by  Dr.  William  Harkness,  a  physician  of 
prominence  and  an  expert  in  the  study  of  fungi, 
especially  of  the  group  known  as  truffles.  Both  men 
were  vigorous  and  rather  intolerant,  a  combination 
of  qualities  which  was  not  rare  in  pioneer  days,  and 
had  disrupted  more  than  one  California  organization 
even  as  it  affected  the  famous  "society  on  the 
Stanislow."  Indeed^  it  is  reputed  that  the  dis- 
cords in  the  institution  furnished  the  motive  for 
Bret  Harte's  satirical  verse. 

At  the  time  of  which  I  write  Harkness  had  for 

some  years  been   president  of  the   academy,  with 

the   rival  group   more  or  less   shut  out  from   the 

Election  as  management.     He  now  expressed  a  desire  to  retire 

president     m  my  favorj  an(j  j  was  unanimously  elected  by  the 

vote  of  both  factions.    I  then  endeavored,  with  fair 

success,  to  put  an  end  to  the  old  feud.    Twice  for 

different  reasons  I  declined  reelection,  holding  the 

position,  however,  from  1896  to  1898,  again  from 

1901  to  1903,  and  for  a  third  time  from  1908  to 

C  540  3 


1895]    The  California  Academy  of  Sciences 

1911.  During  this  period  the  academy  publications 
were  raised  to  a  very  high  standard  as  to  number, 
scientific  value,  and  typographical  appearance.  For 
this,  special  credit  was  due  Dr.  Ritter,  the  editor; 
and  it  should  be  added  that  the  same  level  of  excel- 
lence has  been  continuously  maintained  by  our 
successors. 

In  the  disastrous  fire  which  followed  the  earth- 
quake of  1906,  the  academy  lost  its  original  build- 
ing and  most  of  its  collections.  For  the  next  seven  After  the 
years  it  did  little  but  mark  time  until  accumulated  zreat  fire 
savings  made  possible  a  new  building.  During  that 
interval,  however,  Miss  Alice  Eastwood,  Leverett 
M.  Loomis,  and  John  Van  Denburgh,  curators 
respectively  of  plants,  sea  birds,  and  reptiles,  toiled 
steadily  at  the  restoration  of  the  collections.  In 
1913  the  position  of  director  was  made  a  salaried 
one  of  importance,  Dr.  Evermann  being  called  to  it 
from  the  Bureau  of  Fisheries;  in  1914  a  fine  edifice 
of  concrete  was  completed  in  Golden  Gate  Park. 
Through  the  generous  interest  of  wealthy  citizens  Natural 
Evermann  soon  secured  experts  to  continue  the  H^story 
splendid  series  of  habitat  groups  already  men- 
tioned. These  feature  the  homes  of  various  con- 
spicuous birds  and  mammals  of  the  Pacific  Slope  — 
sea-lions  of  two  species,  the  hair  seal,  fur  seal, 
deer,  elk,  mountain  sheep,  bear,  panther,  and  other 
animals  of  the  interior,  as  well  as  birds  of  the  desert, 
swamp,  and  shore.  Taken  as  a  whole  they  represent 
some  of  the  finest  work  of  its  kind,  though  perhaps 
the  most  impressive  exhibit  of  the  sort  is  at  the 
University  of  Iowa  —  namely,  a  superb  panorama 
of  Laysan  Island  with  its  amazing  variety  of  nest- 
ing sea  birds.  This  was  prepared  under  the  direction 


The  Days  of  a  Man  £1895 

of  Professor  Charles  C.  Nutting  (a  former  student 
of  mine  in  Indianapolis  in  1874)  from  specimens  and 
photographs  secured  by  him  on  the  expedition  of  the 
Albatross  to  Hawaii  in  1902. 

My  relations  with  the  academy  workers,  several 
of  them  of  marked  ability,  are  most  pleasant.  With 
many  other  similar  groups,  some  of  which  have 
shown  me  special  honors,  I  have  also  been  at  one 
time  or  another  closely  connected. 


Active  and        I  am  an  elected  life  member,  either  active  or  honorary,  of 
honorary      several  different  learned  societies,  among  them  the  American 
mem  er-       Philosophical   Society,  the  Zoological  Society  of  London,  the 
Cobden  Club  of  London,  the  Royal  Academy  of  Sciences  of 
Sweden,  the  Linnaean  Society  of  New  South  Wales,  the  Natural- 
ists' Club  of  Sydney,  and  the  Biological  Society  of  Washington. 
In  1912  I  was  president  of  the  American  Association  for  the 
Advancement  of  Science.    In  1921  I  was  welcomed  as  an  hon- 
orary   "Associate    in    Zoology    in     the    Smithsonian     Insti- 
tution/' 

To  the  Audubon  Society  I  have  belonged  from  the  beginning 
and  for  twenty  years  or  more  have  been  one  of  its  officials, 
at  least  in  name.  In  systematic  protection  of  our  native  birds, 
this  association  has  carried  on  a  work  of  the  highest  importance, 
whether  viewed  from  the  economic  or  the  aesthetic  side.  Of 
the  Sierra  Club,  founded  in  1891,  primarily  for  the  protection 
of  Yosemite  Park,  I  was  a  charter  member  and  for  many  years 
a  director. 

Besides  the  above  connections,  I  have  served  at  home  as 
president  (1915)  of  the  National  Education  Association,  trustee 
and  vice-chairman  (1915-1916)  of  the  (Carnegie)  Foundation 
for  the  Advancement  of  Teaching,  trustee  of  the  (Carnegie) 
Association  for  Simplified  Spelling,  vice-president  of  the 
American  Peace  Society,  chairman  of  an  American  Eugenics 
Commission,  president  of  the  American  Vigilance  Association, 
vice-president  of  the  American  Society  of  Social  Hygiene, 
chief  director  (1909-1911)  of  the  (Ginn)  World  Peace  Founda- 

c  542] 


1896]          Supreme  Court  Decision 

tion,  trustee  of  the  Agassiz  Association,1  a  director  of  the 
Boy  Scouts,  and  in  other  positions  of  like  character,  some 
active,  some  partly  honorary. 

Abroad,  I  have  been  elected  vice-president  of  the  Eugenics 
Education  Society  of  London,  vice-president  of  the  British 
National  Association  for  Public  Welfare,  member  of  the  Cobden 
Club,  and  dean  of  the  American  section  of  the  World  Peace 
Congress  at  The  Hague  in  1913.  In  addition,  I  belong  to  the 
French  Federation  des  Abolitionistes,  and  Bureau  des  Na- 
tionalites,  the  Fiskerei  Verein  of  Norway,  the  Swiss  Alpenclub, 
and  the  Norwegian  Alpenforening;  and  since  1904,  by  elec- 
tion of  the  World  Congress  of  Zoology  at  Cambridge,  England, 
I  have  also  been  a  member  of  the  International  Commission 
of  Zoological  Nomenclature. 

On  March  2,  1896,  Stanford  University  re- 
ceived news  of  the  favorable  decision  of  the  United 
States  Supreme  Court.  All  work  was  at  once 
suspended;  and  the  students,  pouring  out  of  the 
classrooms,  proceeded  to  celebrate  with  the  utmost 
enthusiasm.  Unfortunately  Mrs.  Jordan  and  I  had 
gone  to  San  Francisco  and  so  were  for  the  time  being 
out  of  reach.  Nevertheless,  the  impatient  young 
people  surged  over  at  intervals  to  the  house,  vo- 
ciferating the  Stanford  yell.  It  was  then  that  Loro  Loro 
Bonito,  taking  the  air  on  a  big  live  oak,  listened  Bo** 

•  i     i.      i     i  •          •  11  11  .  t«t.      learns  the 

with  both  his  yellow  ears,  and  between  times  dm-  Stanford 
gently  essayed  the  "Rah,  rah,  rah"  slogan  until  "yfl1" 
practice  made  perfect.     Arrived  at  the  Palo  Alto 
station  after  darkness  had  fallen,  my  wife  and  I 
faced  an  uproarious  delegation  made  up  of  the  whole 
Student    Body.     The   horses   now   being   detached 

1  In  the  work  of  this  society  founded  and  directed  by  Edward  F.  Bigelow, 
I  have  long  been  interested.  Its  purpose  is  the  promotion  of  nature  study 
among  boys  and  girls.  In  1911,  I  visited  Bigelow  at  his  center  of  operations, 
"Arcadia,"  Sound  Beach,  Connecticut.  In  California,  excellent  work  along 
similar  lines  is  carried  on  by  C.  M.  Goethe  of  Sacramento,  whose  series  of 
leaflets  on  bird  ways  has  been  effective  in  rousing  and  sustaining  interest. 

C  543  3 


The  Days  of  a  Man 


from   our  waiting   carriage,    the    boys    dragged   us 
triumphantly  up  to  the  front  of  Roble  Hall. 

During  the  evening,  professors  and  students  to- 
gether waited  upon  Mrs.  Stanford  in  her  Campus 
Mrs.  Stan-  home.  There  her  quiet  gratitude  matched  our 
^laiud  exuberant  joy,  and  an  abundance  of  simple  re- 
freshments had  been  hastily  gathered  in  from  all 
available  neighboring  sources.  By  morning,  the 
little  local  government  post  office,  a  temporary 
wooden  building,  had  blossomed  forth  in  a  coat  of 
cardinal  red,  much  to  its  improvement ;  that  artistic 
service,  I  may  add,  was  reputed  to  be  the  work  of 
a  lad  destined  to  become,  twenty  years  later,  presi- 
dent of  the  institution. 


C.  Among  us  all,  I  remember,  no  one  rejoiced  more  than  Mr. 
Nash  Nash,  a  scholarly  and  courteous  gentleman  of  English  birth 
from  whose  tribute  to  Mr.  Stanford  I  quoted  in  earlier  pages. 
For  a  number  of  years  young  Leland's  tutor,  he  remained  in 
the  family  after  .the  boy's  death  as  the  Governor's  private 
secretary,  and  was  still  practically  a  member  of  the  house- 
hold. Upon  Mr.  Woodruff's  resignation  as  librarian  at  the  close 
of  this  college  year,  Nash  became  his  successor.  In  that  posi- 
tion his  work  was  entirely  satisfactory,  for  although  without 
technical  training,  he  had  excellent  judgment  and  a  wide 
knowledge  of  books.  His  death  in  1902  left  a  gap  in  *the 
university  community.  


C  544  3 


CHAPTER  TWENTY-TWO 


FOR  the  summer  of  1896  I  was  called  upon  Fur 
to  undertake  a  totally  new  and  most  interesting  Problem 
scientific  task.  In  the  spring  Charles  Sumner 
Hamlin,  then  Assistant  Secretary  of  the  Treasury, 
came  to  see  me  at  the  University,  bringing  President 
Cleveland's  request  that  I  take  the  headship  of  the 
American  division  of  a  Joint  High  Commission  of 
Investigation  of  the  Fur  Seal l  problem  in  Bering 
Sea.  For  though  the  questions  in  dispute  between 
Great  Britain  and  the  United  States  had  been 
placed  in  1893  before  a  Tribunal  of  Arbitration  at 
Paris,  the  verdict  or  award  was  ineffective  for  the 
preservation  of  the  herd. 

The  failure  of  the  Paris  Award  (which  failure  had 
been  used  as  an  argument  against  Mr.  Cleveland's 
proposed  general  Treaty  of  Arbitration  with  Great 
Britain,  put  forward  during  his  first  administration) 

1  It  must  be  noted  that,  zoologically  speaking,  the  "Fur  Seal"  is  not  really 
a  Seal,  but  rather  an  aquatic  Bear.  True  seals  or  hair  seals  —  Pbocidce  —  have 
no  external  ears;  their  fur  is  short  and  thick,  mostly  yellow-gray  in  color; 
the  position  of  their  hind  legs  prevents  them  from  walking  on  land;  and  their 
short  digitigrade  feet  are  not  provided  with  flippers.  Among  land  animals 
their  nearest  relative  is  the  Otter. 

The  various  species  of  Fur  Seal,  Sea  Lion,  and  Walrus  have  external  ears 
and  plantigrade  feet  in  which  long  flippers  extend  beyond  the  small  toenails; 
they  can  walk  on  land,  though  a  bit  clumsily.  The  males  are  strong,  courageous, 
and  pugnacious.  Among  land  animals  their  nearest  relative  is  the  Bear. 

The  Fur  Seals  of  Bering  Sea  are  not  all  of  one  species.  That  of  the  Pribilof 
Islands  —  Callorbinus  alascanus  —  is  the  largest  and  most  valuable.  The  Rus- 
sian species  —  Callorbinus  ursinus  —  is  darker  in  color,  with  longer  neck  and 
coarser  fur.  The  Japanese  form  —  Callorbinus  curilensis  —  is  still  smaller  and 
(unlike  the  others)  has  the  under  fur  of  a  yellowish  shade.  The  sealskin  of  com- 
merce, I  should  here  explain,  has  all  the  long  hairs  drawn  out,  after  which  the 
pale  under  fur  is  dyed  a  warm  brownish  black. 

CS4S3 


The  Days  of  a  Man  £1896 

arose  from  its  double  nature.  This  embraced 
questions  of  law  on  the  one  hand  and  problems  of 
Natural  History  on  the  other.  The  United  States, 
moreover,  had  claimed  too  much  and  proved  too 
little.  First  we  had  insisted  on  joint  ownership 
d™usum"  w^k  Russ*a  °f  Bering  Sea,  contending  this  to  be 
mare  clausum  (closed  sea)  and  so  asserting  ownership 
of  the  herd  wherever  it  might  stray.  Secondly,  we 
failed  to  make  clear  the  international  values  of  the 
Fur  Seal  and  the  methods  essential  to  its  preser- 
vation—  these  last  hinging  on  the  fact  that  while 
superfluous  males  may  be  safely  and  freely  killed 
on  land,  pelagic  sealing  or  slaughter  in  the  sea,  a 
process  that  mostly  involves  gravid  females,  cannot 
fail  to  be  ruinous. 

The  unwarranted  contention  that  Bering  is  mare 
clausum  was  a  pet  notion  of  Mr.  Elaine,  the  astute 
and  conspicuous  Secretary  of  State  under  President 
Harrison.  Furthermore,  the  failure  to  call  to  Paris 
our  own  excellent  committee  of  investigation,  Dr. 
C.  Hart  Merriam  and  Dr.  Thomas  C.  Mendenhall, 
was  another  serious  mistake. 

As  to  those  sections  of  the  Award  which  were 
based  on  international  law,  the  Tribunal  was  very 
likely  in  the  right;  as  to  those  parts  dealing  with 
the  habits  and  necessary  protection  of  the  animals 
themselves,  the  judges  had  been  ill-informed,  much 
of  the  testimony  being  prejudiced  and  some  even 
perjured.  Unfortunately,  also,  they  showed  very 
little  interest  in  any  aspect  of  the  case  not  purely 
legalistic  or  diplomatic. 

Under  the  "protective"  regulations  adopted  in 
1893,  the  herd  was  rapidly  dwindling,  a  fact  which 
had  been  stated  in  rather  sharp  but  truthful  lan- 

C  546] 


1896]  Ways  of  the  Fur  Seal 

guage  by  John  W.  Foster  in  1895  m  a  note  °f  tne 
State  Department.  It  was  in  connection  with 
criticisms  of  Foster's  plain  speaking  on  that  matter 
that  the  phrase,  "shirt-sleeves  diplomacy,"  had  its 
rise.  Concerning  this,  Hamlin  said  to  me:  "If 
you  want  to  get  John  Bull's  attention,  you  must 
heave  a  brick  through  his  front  window." 

The  case  at  issue  was  really  a  very  simple  one. 
The  Fur  Seals  of  the  North  Pacific  make  their  Breeding 
"homes"  and  breed  on  islands  in  Bering  Sea  —  the  homes 
Pribilofs  (St.  Paul  and  St.  George)  belonging  to  the 
United  States,  and  the  Komandorski  or  Commander 
group  (Bering  and  Medni  or  Copper)  owned  by 
Russia.  Beginning  with  the  first  official  Russian 
occupation,  the  breeding  grounds  —  "rookeries"  — 
had  received  all  necessary  protection;  but  continued 
existence  of  the  herds  is  dependent  as  well  on  se- 
curity at  sea  while  the  animals  are  feeding  or  mi- 
grating in  the  ocean  beyond  the  legal  three-mile 
limit  of  territorial  jurisdiction.  Winter  is  spent  by  Roving 
the  entire  herd  in  the  open  —  the  old  males  moving  babits 
coastwise  as  far  as  the  Gulf  of  Alaska,  the  mature 
females  ranging  far  offshore  down  to  the  latitude 
of  San  Diego,  while  the  young  are  scattered  vari- 
ously between.  In  June  and  early  July  all  return 
to  the  islands,  where  the  "pups"  are  born  and 
where  the  young  remain  until  October  storms  drive 
them  all  away.  Meanwhile  the  adults  necessarily 
leave  at  intervals  to  feed,  going  out  for  that  purpose 
from  100  to  200  miles. 

For  many  years,  under  both  Russian  and  Ameri- 
can control,  land  killing  was  confined  to  young 
superfluous  males.  And  as  only  about  one  adult 
male  or  "beachmaster"  in  from  thirty  to  fifty  is 

C5473 


The  Days  of  a  Man  [1896 

able  to  maintain  himself  on  a  rookery  and  rule  a 
"harem,"  the  great  majority  are  of  course  superflu- 
ous. On  land  the  "killables"  are  driven  about  and 
handled  as  easily  as  sheep,  and  no  general  dimi- 
nution has  ever  arisen  from  such  selective  slaughter, 
the  survival  of  even  one  male  in  a  hundred  being 
sufficient  for  the  actual  needs  of  propagation. 

Each  mother  gives  birth  to  one  pup  a  year,  the 
proportion  of  males  and  females  among  the  newly 
born  running  practically  equal.  During  the  '70' s 
there  were  at  least  a  million  breeding  mothers  on 
the  American  islands,  and  perhaps  half  as  many 
Disastrous  on  the  Russian.  But  pelagic  sealing,  begun  in  a 
sma'l  wav  as  early  as  J872,  had  within  a  decade 
already  become  a  menace.  Necessarily  the  ma- 
jority of  those  caught  at  sea  were  females,  for  land 
killing  continually  reduced  the  relative  number  of 
males.  Moreover,  each  female  taken  meant  the 
destruction  of  not  only  the  unborn  young  she  carried, 
but  also  of  the  nursing  pup  she  had  left  on  the 
beach  while  she  went  out  to  feed,  and  which  thus 
died  of  starvation.  By  1897  there  were  only  about 
130,000  breeding  females  on  the  Pribilofs,  with  less 
than  half  as  many  on  the  Komandorski,  where 
protection  was  not  so  extended.  Slaughter  of  the 
mothers  at  a  rate  in  excess  of  the  rate  of  increase 
was  thus  rapidly  destroying  the  herd;  although 
other  causes  have  been  assigned  for  diplomatic 
purposes,  none  is  worthy  of  the  slightest  consid- 
eration in  the  face  of  the  plain  facts. 

At  Paris  in  1893  it  was  evident  that  no  existing 
canon  of  international  law  covered  the  case,  there 
being  no  other  valuable  animal  with  similar  habits, 
and  so  no  adequate  precedent  for  protection;  the 

C  5483 


BERING  SEA,  SHOWING  POSITION  OF 
PRIBILOF  AND  COMMANDER  ISLANDS 


s-.       PRIBILOF  ISLAND 
(^COMMANDER  ISLANDS,..-' 


PACIFIC  O     C     £     A 


ST.  PAUL  ISLAND 

PRIBILOF  ISLANDS 

ALASKA 


From  "The  Story  of  Matka" 


1896]  The  Paris  Tribunal 

seizure  of  any  wild  creature  anywhere  in  the  open 
sea  had  always  been  assumed  as  a  universal  right. 
In  the  unquestionable  absence  of  applicable  inter- 
national statute,  it  lay  within  the  province  of  the 
Tribunal  to  make  new  law.  This,  in  fact,  it  did  by 
its  limitation  of  pelagic  sealing,  though  in  such  an 
ineffective  way  that  the  action  was  valueless  except 
as  a  legal  precedent. 

Stripped  of  verbiage  the  vital  claim  of  the  United  States  was  Contention 
based  on  the  following  correct  assertions:  (a)  The  Fur  Seal  °f  & 
has  a  high  economic  world  value;  (b)  the  nature  and  habits 
of  the  animal  being  what  they  are,  only  selective  killing  of  males 
on  land  can  be  safely  allowed;  (c)  adequate  protection  had 
previously  long  existed,  so  that  an  established  and  valuable 
industry  had  grown  up;  (d)  killing  at  sea  was  leading  to  ex- 
termination, already  far  advanced;  (e)  common  interest,  there- 
fore, demanded  the  abolition  of  pelagic  sealing,  and  the  recog- 
nition that  ownership  of  the  herds  accompanies  ownership  of 
their  homes. 

Our  case  was  complicated  and  vitiated  from  the  start,  how- 
ever, by  further  claims  of  a  different  nature;  namely,  (a)  the 
right  to  exercise  exclusive  jurisdiction  over  the  herd  wherever 
found  and  (b)  over  the  sea  in  which  it  roamed  and  fed,  together 
with  (c)  the  right  to  use  force  in  support  of  such  jurisdiction. 
As  to  the  last  the  United  States  Government  had  already 
seized  several  British  vessels  found  operating  in  Bering  Sea. 

The  essential  factor  in  the  American  contention  was  the  right 
to  protect  the  Fur  Seal,  as  all  other  claims  were  useless  with- 
out it.  The  assertion  of  sovereignty  over  Bering  Sea,  of  little 
importance  in  itself  but  pretentious  in  form,  was  used  by 
Blaine  to  awaken  popular  interest  at  home,  even  though  it 
aroused  opposition  in  Europe.  

The  Award  of  the  Tribunal,  in  brief,  was: 

1.  Denial  that  Bering  Sea  is  mare  clausum. 

2.  Denial  that  the  Fur  Seal  herds  are  property  of  any  na- 
tion when  in  the  open  sea. 

C  549  3 


The  Days  of  a  Man  Ci896 

Paris  3.   Denial  of  the  right  of  seizure  of  sealing  vessels  at  large, 

Award        an(j  requirement  that  vessels  already  seized  should  be  paid  for. 
4.    Provision  for  "the  protection  and   preservation  of  the 
Fur  Seal"  in  the  common  interest. 

The  last  object  it  was  sought  to  accomplish  through  a  series 
of  regulations  by  which  pelagic  sealing,  while  recognized  as 
legal,  was  subjected  to  certain  restrictions.  Thus  during  May, 
June,  and  July  it  was  prohibited  everywhere  on  the  American 
side,  and  at  all  times  within  sixty  miles  of  the  Pribilofs.  Around 
the  Commander  group  no  time  limit  was  set,  and  the  other 
restriction  was  for  thirty  miles  only.  As  already  implied,  these 
regulations,  though  in  a  degree  useful,  were  quite  inadequate. 


The  duty  of  the  American  commission  of  1896 
(continued  in  1897)  was  to  make  a  fresh  and  com- 
plete study  of  all  the  facts  concerned,  and  then 
recommend  means  for  saving  the  herd.  A  British 
commission  under  similar  instructions  worked  jointly 
with  us.  A  Japanese  group  had  also  been  appointed, 
but  its  members  were  unable  to  reach  Bering  Sea; 
they  did,  however,  join  us  at  Washington  in  De- 
cember. 

Concurrent  with  our  efforts,  it  was  of  course 
necessary  to  review  those  of  previous  investigators. 
Early  For  this,  a  basis  was  furnished  by  the  work  of  the 
records  Russian  bishop,  Ivan  Veniaminof,  venerable  "apostle 
of  the  Aleuts,"  whose  very  precise  and  concise 
account  of  the  seal  islands  appeared  in  1839,  and 
to  which  later  Russian  investigation  added  little. 
The  first  report  after  our  purchase  of  Alaska  was 
that  made  by  Captain  Charles  Bryant  in  1870. 
This  was  followed  in  1874  by  the  elaborate  account 
of  Henry  W.  Elliott,  then  a  young  artist  employed 
at  the  Smithsonian  Institution.  Elliott's  original 
observations  were  in  general  keen  and  graphic,  and 


1896]  Rookery  Surveys 

his  drawings  very  spirited,  so  that  the  total  had  a 
distinct  value  for  subsequent  investigations.  But  First  esti- 
his  estimate  as  to  numbers  (based  on  the  space  mateasto 
occupied  by  the  rookery  as  a  whole,  divided  by  the 
number  of  square  feet  assumed  to  be  covered  by 
one  individual)  I  always  thought  far  too  high  — 
an  opinion  recently  verified  by  the  measurements 
of  G.  Dallas  Hanna,  now  curator  of  Invertebrate 
Paleontology  in  the  California  Academy  of  Sciences. 
In  1891,  in  preparation  for  the  Paris  Tribunal  of 
1893,  Mr.  Elliott  made  a  second  trip  to  Alaska. 
From  this  he  returned  with  a  bitter  animus  against 
the  North  American  Commercial  Company  (which 
as  lessee  of  the  islands  had  succeeded  the  Alaska 
Commercial  Company)  and  with  the  strong  ob- 
session that  the  killing  of  superfluous  males  was  a 
determining  factor  in  the  enormous  deterioration 
which  the  herd  had  suffered  since  his  previous  visit. 
On  the  other  hand,  the  several  trained  and  compe-  Land  km- 
tent  observers 1  sent  successively  to  Bering  Sea 
from  1890  to  1895,  agreeing  in  every  particular, 
demonstrated  that  the  elimination  of  superfluous 
males  had  no  greater  effect  on  the  breeding  seal 
herd  than  on  a  herd  of  cattle  or  a  flock  of  sheep, 
and  furthermore  reported  that  the  sole  cause  of 
destruction  lay  in  pelagic  sealing. 

At  the  time  of  my  appointment  I  was  notified  that  two  of  My 
the  ablest  naturalists  of  the  United  States  National  Museum,  associates 
Leonhard  Stejneger  (mentioned  in  earlier  pages)  and  Frederic 
A.  Lucas,  would  be  commissioned  as  my  associates;  also  that 
the  U.S.S.  Albatross  under  Jefferson  Moser  of  the  Navy,  and 
with  Charles  H.  Townsend  as  naturalist,  had  been  assigned 

1  C.  Hart  Merriam  and  Thomas  C.  Mendenhall,  then  Barton  W.  Ever- 
mann,  and  (later)  Frederick  W.  True  and  Charles  H.  Townsend  —  all  to  the 
Pribilofs;  and  Leonhard  Stejneger  to  the  Commander  group. 

3 


The  Days  of  a  Man 


D896 


A  capable 
group 


The 
British 
commis- 
sion 


for  the  service.  As  secretary  and  recorder  I  chose  Clark,  then 
academic  secretary  of  Stanford  University.1  With  us  went 
also  Joseph  Murray,  then  acting  as  special  agent  of  the  Treasury 
Department,  afterward  chief  agent  of  the  islands  for  a  second 
term. 

Captain  Moser  and  his  first  officer,  Lieutenant  Parmenter, 
were  deeply  interested  in  the  work  and  furnished  the  triangu- 
lations  and  measurements  on  which  our  maps  were  based. 
Stejneger's  services  were  invaluable,  the  more  so  as  he  had 
already  spent  a  summer  on  the  Commander  Islands,  making 
an  elaborate  investigation  of  the  Russian  Fur  Seal.  Lucas,  a 
comparative  anatomist  of  high  rank,  devoted  himself  to  a  study 
of  the  structure  and  habits  of  the  animals  of  the  Pribilofs. 

Townsend  had  been  for  a  number  of  years  the  scientific 
expert  of  the  Albatross,  and  had  several  times  made  maps  show- 
ing the  yearly  decrease  of  the  Pribilof  rookeries,  on  which  the 
abandoned  territory  of  one  year  was  invaded  the  next  by  the 
delicate  "seal  grass"  or  foxtail — Alopecurus  merriami.  The 
mapping  and  photography  for  our  commission  was  therefore 
especially  assigned  to  Townsend,  and  was  executed  with  re- 
markable skill.  He  afterward  became  director  of  the  New  York 
City  Aquarium  at  Battery  Park,  while  Lucas  later  took  charge 
of  the  Brooklyn  Museum  of  Natural  History,  and  then  of  the 
American  Museum  in  New  York. 

The  accuracy  of  Clark's  records  and  his  large  familiarity 
with  stock  breeding  made  him  an  extremely  valuable  member 
of  the  commission.  Afterward  he  was  several  times  sent  by 
the  Government  to  take  general  charge  of  the  islands  during 
the  summer,  and  to  count  the  herd  from  year  to  year.  He  thus 
ultimately  became  the  highest  authority  on  the  life  and  habits 
of  the  Fur  Seal,  a  subject  on  which  he  wrote  numerous  papers 
as  well  as  governmental  reports. 

The  British  commission  was  headed  by  D'Arcy  Wentworth 
Thompson,  professor  of  Zoology  in  the  University  of  Dundee 
—  a  scholarly  naturalist  with  a  wide  range  of  interests,  literary 
as  well  as  biological.2  Associated  with  him  were  James  Macoun 

1  See  Chapter  xvm,  page  445. 

2  All  of  Thompson's  numerous  bags  and  boxes  were  labeled  "  Behring  Sea 
Mission."     Seeing  them  on  the  pier  at  Liverpool,  a  bystander  inquired:    "Now 
where  are  the  missionaries?  "     And  one  day  when  the  professor  appeared  in  his 

n  5523 


18963        Duncan  and  His  Disciples 

of  Ottawa,  botanist  of  the  Canadian  Museum,  and  Gerald 
E.  H.  Barrett-Hamilton,  a  young  British  naturalist.  These 
gentlemen  accompanied  us  on  the  Albatross  as  guests  of  the 
United  States  Government,  and  every  possible  courtesy  was 
shown  them  on  the  islands.  From  Ottawa  was  also  sent  Andrew 
Halkett,  a  skillful  observer  who  spent  the  entire  summer  on 
various  sealing  schooners. 

Leaving  Seattle  for  the  north  in  early  June,  we 
had  one  of  the  most  delightful  sea-trips  in  the 
world,  the  "inside  passage"  through  the  Alexander 
Archipelago,  a  maze  of  rocky,  wooded  islands  be- 
tween Vancouver  and  Sitka.  At  the  Indian  village 
of  New  Metlakahtla  on  Annette  Island,  we  met  for 
the  first  time  the  missionary,  William  Duncan,  a 
very  remarkable  man.  Sometime  in  the  'yo's,  as 
clergyman  of  the  Anglican  Communion,  Duncan 
had  begun  his  labors  among  the  Simsian  Indians,  a 
fierce  tribe  of  cannibals  living  on  the  mainland 
coast  of  British  Columbia,  south  of  the  Alaskan 
line.  By  sheer  force  of  personal  courage,  after  A  great 
many  hairbreadth  escapes  he  won  the  confidence  of 
the  people,  and  then  proceeded  to  civilize  and 
Christianize  them,  so  that  later,  under  his  direction, 
they  built  a  pretty  village  called  Metlakahtla,  and 
became  comfortably  self-supporting. 

The  Church,  taking  belated  and  unintelligent 
notice  of  the  good  work,  then  sent  out  a  bishop  to 
direct  it.  But  the  latter  insisted  on  the  use  of 
wine  at  Communion,  an  arrangement  to  which 
Duncan  strenuously  objected,  as  even  a  taste  of 

best  suit,  Lucas  remarked:  "Any  one  would  know  that  your  clothes  were  made 
in  London."  Thompson  seemed  gratified.  "How  so?"  he  asked.  "Because 
none  of  them  fit,"  was  the  answer.  But  I  soon  had  my  fling  at  Lucas,  who 
was  recounting  his  boyish  adventures  on  a  trip  to  the  South  Seas.  "Every- 
where we  stopped,"  said  he,  "  the  people  ran  out  to  look  at  me."  "  No  wonder," 
I  retorted,  "with  that  bunch  of  red  side  whiskers  1" 

CSS3  3 


achieve- 
ment 


The  Days  of  a  Man  £1896 

intoxicants  has  a  maddening  effect  on  the  Indians, 
who  were  kept  temperate  only  by  the  most  rigid 
prohibition  of  alcoholic  drinks.  Moreover,  the  be- 
lated presence  of  a  tenderfoot  official  as  director  of 
a  difficult  work  already  accomplished  was  resented 
by  the  whole  community.  Duncan  therefore  de- 
cided to  remove  his  flock  from  the  bishop's  juris- 
Removal  to  diction.  He  accordingly  arranged  with  the  United 
Annette  States  Government  for  the  occupancy  of  Annette 
Island,  Alaska,  some  fifty  miles  more  or  less  from 
the  former  location.  And  thither  nearly  all  the 
people  migrated  with  him,  leaving  the  abandoned 
settlement  to  the  bishop,  while  they  proceeded  to 
construct  a  "New  Metlakahtla."  This  is  a  sub- 
stantial village  with  salmon  cannery,  church,  school- 
house,  brass  band  to  greet  incoming  boats,  church 
choir,  Sunday  school,  and  "societies  of  culture." 
The  steamer  they  built,  however,  they  were  not 
allowed  to  use  for  a  long  time,  because  not  being 
United  States  citizens  they  could  not  be  licensed  as 
pilots  or  engineers,  and  duly  licensed  white  pilots 
would  not  work  for  Indians.  After  our  visit  the 
absurd  embargo  was  raised  by  order  of  Mr.  Hamlin, 
to  whom  I  explained  the  situation. 

On  the  town  hall  of  New  Metlakahtla,  under  the 
carved  figure  of  a  lion  and  an  eagle,  runs  the  follow- 
ing inscription : 

New  We  leave  the  King  of  the  Beasts,  for  he  is  a  deceiver;   he 

allegiance  savs  no  one  Js  a  slave  under  his  flag.  So  every  year  he  punishes 
us  without  cause;  he  held  up  his  naughty  gun  to  crush  our 
village.  Now  I  find  my  good  friend,  he  is  King  of  Birds;  he 
has  sharp  eyes  to  watch  over  our  village  if  the  enemy  surround 
it.  I  bid  the  Lion  farewell. 

Independence  Day,  August  7,  1887. 


1896]  Toward  Bering  Sea 

Sitka,  the  quaint,  dying,  old  Russian  capital,  I  Sitka 
found  unexpectedly  charming.  Few  towns,  indeed, 
have  a  fairer  site.  In  front,  at  the  mouth  of  its 
green  harbor,  towers  the  white  cone  of  Mount 
Edgecombe,  a  great  cold  volcano,  while  behind,  the 
damp,  green  forest  leads  backward  to  a  high,  broken 
range,  snow-covered  and  singularly  picturesque.  In 
the  ancient  church  are  some  beautiful  paintings 
dating  from  the  time  when  the  sea-otter  trade  filled 
the  Russian  ports  with  gold.  ' 

Two  days  out  from  Sitka  we  hoped  to  see  the  Glaciers 
mighty  snow  mass  of  St.  Elias,  18,000  feet,  with  its 
huge  Malaspina  glacier,  forty  miles  across  where  it 
ends  near  the  sea;  but  the  cloud  rack  hid  both 
completely  in  this  and  my  subsequent  trips.  From 
Kodiak  on,  however,  the  journey  was  brightened  by 
the  sight  of  occasional  snowy  islands.  White  Shi- 
shaldin,  a  still-smoking  volcano  of  perfect  symmetry 
rising  apparently  sheer  from  the  sea,  stands  unique 
in  my  memory;  Pavlof  on  the  mainland  is  also 
active  and  likewise  white  with  driven  snow.  But 
Unimak  and  Akutan  islands  bulk  huge  and  dark  at 
the  eastern  base  of  the  long  Aleutian  chain. 

Beyond  them  lies  the  greater  Unalaska  with  its 
monstrous  volcano,  Makushin,  —  not  at  all  a  cone, 
—  at  the  foot  of  which  the  splendid  waterfall  of 
Cape  Cheerful  plunges  off  a  high  shelf  in  one  swift 
leap  out  into  the  sea.  Commercially,  Unalaska  is 
by  far  the  most  important  of  the  Aleutians,  as  its 
two  excellent  harbors  are  necessarily  utilized  by  all 
vessels  bound  for  the  north.  Captain's  Harbor,  the 
inner  anchorage,  was  named  for  Cook,  the  celebrated 
explorer,  who  once  spent  the  winter  there.  The 
outer  and  then  more  important  landing-place  is 

C5553 


The  Days  of  a  Man  £1896 

known  as  Dutch  Harbor  —  Golinsky  —  a  misnomer, 
of  course,  given  in  honor  of  the  visit  of  a  German, 
Alexander  von  Humboldt. 

At  Captain's  Harbor  we  found  a  remarkable  case 
of  "ontogenetic  species"  —  that  is,  forms  which  do 
not  breed  true  because  they  owe  their  distinctive 
peculiarities,  not  to  heredity  but  to  differences  in 
environment,  so  that  with  changed  conditions  they 
lose  certain  surface  traits;  they  thus  illustrate  the 
important  truth  that  the  outside  of  an  animal  shows 
Doily  where  it  lives,  the  inside  what  it  is.  Into  the  east 
y?rd™  shore  of  the  harbor,  over  a  waterfall  too  steep  for 
fish  to  ascend,  flows  a  small  brook  well  stocked  with 
Dolly  Varden  trout,  all  of  very  small  size,  not 
reaching  the  weight  of  even  half  a  pound.  In  the 
waters  below,  where  space  is  adequate  and  food 
abundant,  the  swarming  Dolly  Vardens  average 
from  eight  to  ten  pounds  at  maturity.  Trout  and 
char,  above  all  other  kinds  of  fish,  are  molded  by 
their  surroundings.  The  small  size  of  the  brook 
forms  is  due  to  narrow  range  and  scarcity  of  food. 

During  the  summer  the  moss-covered  low  hills 
sheltering  both  harbors  are  gay  with  flowers.  Espe- 
cially charming  is  the  maroon-colored  Saranna  Lily, 
a  species  of  Crown  Imperial  or  Fritillaria.  Every- 
where, too,  creeps  the  dark  crowberry  of  the  Arctic  — 
Empetrum  —  with  here  and  there  the  delicious, 
amber-fruited  raspberry  locally  known  as  molino. 

While  the  Albatross  was  coaling  at  Dutch  Harbor, 
we  drew  our  nets  in  the  inner  bay,  bringing  to  shore 
quantities  of  cod,  greenling,  Dolly  Vardens,  and 
other  species.  During  this  operation  several  hungry 
men,  deserters  from  the  harsh  regime  of  steam  whal- 
ing ships,  Arctic  bound,  came  down  from  the  hills 

C  556] 


1896]  The  Pribilofs 


and  begged  for  whatever  we  could  spare.  On  the 
beach  rotted  the  hulks  of  four  Canadian  sealers 
seized  by  order  of  Secretary  Elaine  and  for  which, 
by  the  Paris  Award,  the  United  States  had  been 
obliged  to  pay. 

Leaving  Unalaska,  we  sailed  through  fog  and 
storm  for  a  day  and  a  night,  arriving  in  the  early 
morning  at  about  the  place  where  Captain  Moser 
said  "St.  George  [Island]  ought  to  be."  The  ship  St. 
now  felt  her  way  gingerly  along  until  we  heard  the 
gruff  roar  of  the  "beachmasters"  on  the  East 
Rookery.  With  this  were  mingled  the  loud  bleats, 
exactly  like  those  of  sheep,  of  the  few  females  al- 
ready returned  from  their  long  swim. 


Having  made  a  hasty  survey  of  the  four  large 
breeding  grounds  of  St.  George,  we  passed  directly 
to  the  more  important  island  of  St.  Paul,  forty  St.  Paul 
miles  distant.  There  we  were  cordially  welcomed 
by  the  excellent  agents  in  charge,  J.  B.  Crowley 
and  James  Judge,  and  by  J.  Stanley-Brown,  a  son- 
in-law  of  President  Garfield,  at  that  time  repre- 
sentative of  the  then  lessees,  the  North  American 
Commercial  Company.  Stanley-Brown  was  an  at- 
tractive and  capable  young  man  who  had  served 
as  a  secretary  at  the  Paris  Tribunal  and  afterward 
as  government  agent  on  the  islands  prior  to  the 
appointment  of  Mr.  Judge.  Besides  the  three 
named  above,  we  found  a  dozen  or  more  other  em- 
ployees of  the  United  States  or  the  company;  and 
Mrs.  Judge,  a  charming  young  bride  lately  arrived 
from  Ohio,  furnished  a  pleasant  touch  of  femininity. 

C  5573 


The  Days  of  a  Man  £1896 

rbc  Aleuts  The  native  population,  about  three  hundred  in 
all,  descendants  of  Aleuts  brought  as  needed  in  the 
early  days  from  Alaska  or  Kamchatka,  lived  in 
decent  cottages,  puritanically  white,  though  on  the 
Russian  islands  the  authorities  tactfully  allow  vari- 
ous shades  —  blue,  green,  yellow,  or  scarlet  —  to 
suit  the  taste  of  the  occupant.  The  Aleuts  do  the 
work  in  connection  with  the  seal  industry,  but  as 
the  season  is  short  they  are  mightily  at  leisure  for 
the  greater  part  of  the  year,  and  are,  moreover, 
generously  provided  with  food  by  the  Government. 
Of  this  a  large  and  very  acceptable  part  consists  of 
the  flesh  of  the  beasts  killed  for  skins.  Many  of 
the  people  are  quite  intelligent  and  capable;  some 
of  them  show  traces  of  Russian,  and  others  (ap- 
parently) of  American  blood.  Apollon  Bovedurfsky, 
the  tribal  chief,  was  a  man  of  ability  and  proved 
helpful  in  our  work. 

Practically  the  whole  of  every  day  was  spent  by 
us  in  observation  of  the  animals.  Strolling  thus 
across  Zolotoi 1  Sands  on  my  way  to  Gorbatch 
Rookery,  I  once  made  an  unexpected  discovery,  for 
in  the  sand  I  saw  the  skeleton  of  a  young  Fur  Seal, 
which  seemed  at  once  to  clear  up  the  mystery  of 

The          the  so-called  "Roblar  Man."    In  1894,  Mr.  Van  R. 

"Roblar  Elliott,  a  civil  engineer  of  Paso  Robles,  reported  to 
me  the  discovery  of  a  fossil  skeleton,  apparently 
human,  on  a  hill  at  the  neighboring  hamlet  of 
Roblar.  At  Elliott's  suggestion  I  went  to  examine 
the  specimen.  The  imprint  lay  on  a  bare  outcrop 
of  a  very  hard,  white  limestone  deposited  in  Miocene 
times  as  a  soft  calcareous  clay.  Head  and  limbs 
were  lacking,  but  the  torso  seemed  surprisingly  like 

1  This  word,  which  means  "golden,"  is  locally  pronounced  "Zoltoi." 

CS583 


1896]  A  Problem  Solved 

that  of  a  child,  and  the  local  press  made  something 
of  a  sensation  of  the  "Roblar  Man,  the  earliest 
record  of  the  human  race."  I  did  not,  of  course, 
believe  it  to  be  human,  as  no  certain  trace  of  man 
appears  until  long  after  the  Miocene  period;  yet  I 
was  unable  to  identify  it  as  anything  else.  I  there- 
fore asked  J.  P.  Smith  of  Stanford  to  secure"  for 
purposes  of  study  the  section  of  rock  in  which  the 
remains  occur.  The  owners  of  the  property,  how- 
ever, were  not  enthusiastic  over  the  removal,  and 
the  flinty  nature  of  the  rock  made  the  process  very 
difficult.  But  Dr.  Smith  being  allowed  to  take  a  Pulled 
cast  of  the  imprint,  we  sent  duplicates  to  several  experts 
osteologists,  none  of  whom  was  able  to  identify 
the  form  with  certainty,  although  Lucas  made 
a  not  improbable  guess  that  it  was  a  species  of 
dolphin. 

The  Zolotoi  skeleton  lay  in  exactly  the  same 
position  as  our  fossil;  the  details,  moreover,  corre- 
sponded closely,  leaving  little  doubt  that  the  Roblar 
Man  was  some  kind  of  Fur  Seal  or  Sea  Lion,  or 
possibly,  as  recently  suggested  by  Remington  Kel- 
logg, a  baby  whale. 

Other   occasional    incidents   varied    the    routine. 
One  day  when  Apollon  and  a  helper  were  out  fishing  Apoiion's 
with  a  hook  and  line,  they  caught  a  six-foot  halibut  bizbalibut 
which  they  dared  not  bring  home  until  every  one 
had  gone  to  bed,  for  fear  "Dr.  Jordan  would  want 
to  put  it  into  alcohol."     Learning  next  morning  of 
their  luck,  I  took  a  photograph  of  the  great  fish, 
but  explained  that  I  had  no  other  use  for  specimens 
of  that  size ! 

At  another  time  the  same  two  Aleuts  came  near 
bringing  me  into  serious  trouble.  It  was  one  of 

C5593 


The  Days  of  a  Man  £1896 

the  rare  days  without  wind  or  wave,  and  we  took 
a  whaleboat  to  row  over  to  Zapadni,  two  miles 
niandback  away?  a  method  far  less  fatiguing  than  the  usual 
tramp  through  waist-high  wet  grass,  rocks,  and 
sand.  But  as  we  came  back,  a  sudden  fog  shut 
tightly  down;  Apollon  then  lost  his  bearings  and 
thought  he  was  heading  straight  toward  the  village, 
though  I  insisted  that  his  course  led  directly  out 
to  sea.  He  was  obstinate,  however,  and  consented 
to  only  a  slight  compromise.  Fortunately  the  mist 
lifted  after  an  hour  or  so  as  suddenly  as  it  had 
dropped.  Tolstoi  Head  was  now  disclosed  directly 
behind,  while  our  prow  pointed  straight  for  Kam- 
chatka, 2000  miles  away. 

A  tale  of        During  the  summer,  a  few  days  of  enforced  idle- 
tbe  Mist     ness  me  tjme  t    wrjte  "jj^  gt          f  Matka," 

Islands  &  •        i         i  i      •       •  i 

my  own  best  animal  tale  and,  in  its  way,  the  best 
of  its  kind,  each  incident  being  drawn  from  actual 
happenings  (as  vouched  for  in  every  case  by  photo- 
graphs) and  the  local  color  being  therefore  absolutely 
genuine  even  to  the  last  item.  "Matka"  thus 
differs  totally  from  the  ingeniously  clever  "White 
Seal"  of  Rudyard  Kipling. 

The  accident  which  confined  me  to  the  house  was 
a  curious  one.  As  I  climbed  a  low  cliff  behind 
Lukanin  Rookery,  an  "idle  bull"  I  had  not  noticed 
made  a  lunge  at  me  from  above.  Both  of  us  then 
fell  to  the  bottom  of  the  cliff,  after  which  I  limped 
back  to  the  village  with  a  sprained  ankle,  leaving 
my  antagonist  with  a  snubbed  nose. 

In  the  course  of  the  season  we  did  some  deep-sea 
dredging  with  the  Albatross,  which  was  especially 
fitted  for  that  sort  of  work.  Our  principal  trip  ex- 
C  560] 


1896]  Volcanic  Islands 

tended  from  St.   Paul  southward  to  the   Bogoslof  Deep-sea 
Islands,  where  at  a  depth  of  664  fathoms  (3984  feet)  fisbes 
we  obtained  many  interesting  fishes;    among  them 
were    two    new    species    of    "grenadiers"  —  Alba- 
trossia  pectoralis   and   Bogoslovius  clarki.     Another 
species   of   this    type,   the   "  Popeye"  —  Macrourus 
cinereus —  literally  swarms  on  the  bottom  at  that 
depth  in  Bering  Sea. 

The  two  islands  named  for  Su  Ivan  Bogoslof  (St. 
John  the  Revelator)  are  among  the  most  remarkable 
volcanic  dykes  in  the  world.  The  first  arose  hot  The  first 
from  a  depth  of  over  600  fathoms  in  1795;  beside  it  B°£°slof 
for  nearly  a  century  stood  Sail  Rock,  a  lone  shaft 
of  lava.  But  in  1883  the  Rock  disappeared,  while 
at  a  distance  of  nearly  a  mile  a  red-hot  mountain 
burst  from  the  depths  to  the  accompaniment  of 
"earthquake  shocks  and  subterranean  thunders." 
For  years  the  second  mass  steamed  and  sputtered, 
and  even  yet  it  is  said  to  be  not  quite  cold. 

There  was,  however,  more  to  come.  The  Bogoslof 
group  lies  on  the  line  of  the  great  earthquake  rift 
of  California,  and  the  temblor  of  April  18,  1906, 
threw  up  another  steaming  island.  This  was  dis- 
covered the  following  June  by  Dr.  Gilbert,  then  in 
charge  of  the  Albatross  on  its  way  to  make  a  survey 
of  the  deep  waters  about  Japan.  The  third  mass  The  last 
was  not  quite  as  large  as  the  others,  and  apparently 
less  compact.  By  1909  it  had  entirely  disappeared, 
leaving  "in  its  place  a  lake  of  boiling  water  arising 
in  the  icy  sea."  Meanwhile  the  first  and  second 
islands  still  remain  practically  intact,  although 
much  eroded  by  the  waves. 

Upon  our  return  from  the  Bogoslofs,  the  Albatross, 
under  Stejneger's  direction,  went  to  the  Commander 

C  561  3 


The  Days  of  a  Man  [1896 

Islands  for  further  observations,  and  thence  to  the 
Kuriles,  on  three  of  which  rookeries  of  the  Japanese 
Fur  Seal  had  formerly  existed. 


By  the  end  of  our  stay  of  nearly  three  months  we 
had  made  an  elaborate  and  thorough  study  of  every 
rookery  on  the  two  Pribilofs,  supplemented  by  ample 
Life  on  the  photographs  covering  the  whole  season.  The  ma- 
ture  "bulls"  or  "beachmasters"  (500  to  700  pounds 
in  weight)  are  for  the  most  part  on  hand  in  May 
before  the  snow  banks  are  all  gone.  The  younger 
males,  "half-bulls"  or  "bachelors,"  arrive  in  late 
June  or  early  July,  the  oldest  among  them  earliest. 
The  young  of  both  sexes,  those  from  one  to  three 
years  old,  drift  in  from  the  middle  of  July  to  the 
middle  of  August,  a  few  early  arrivals  among  the 
yearlings  finding  places  at  the  foot  of  the  rookeries, 
where  they  teach  the  "pups"  to  swim.  From  June 
20  to  July  20  the  adult  females  or  "cows"  (weigh- 
ing less  than  100  pounds)  come  straggling  back, 
usually  in  small  groups,  most  of  them  about  July  i,1 
a  large  majority  of  the  young  being  born  about 
July  5.  One  of  the  most  marvelous  instincts  known 
in  nature  is  that  possessed  by  the  mother  seals. 
Leaving  in  February  the  latitude  of  California, 
they  beat  their  stormy  way  northward,  passing  in 
fog  through  the  narrow  straits  of  Akutan  or  Unimak, 
and  reach  their  rookery  homes  about  a  week  be- 

1  In  the  Russian  language  the  beachmaster  is  known  as  Sikatcb  (Atagh  in 
Aleut);  the  half-bull  or  bachelor,  from  five  to  eight  years  of  age,  as  Polusi- 
katch,  polu  meaning  half;  the  younger  males  as  Holostiak;  the  females  as  Matka, 
or  mother;  the  little  ones  as  Kotik,  or  puppy.  A  beachmaster  without  a  harem 
is  an  "  idle  bull,"  a  status  he  fiercely  and  persistently  endeavors  to  change. 

1:5623 


1896]  A  Fur  Seal  Census 

fore  the  pups  are  due.  A  pup  born  at  sea  would, 
of  course,  be  drowned  immediately;  and  no  Fur 
Seal  has  ever  been  known  to  land  anywhere  save 
on  breeding  islands.  Furthermore,  the  old  ones 
mostly  return  to  their  own  special  rookeries,  which 
they  rarely  leave  for  any  other. 

An  interesting  exception  to  this  habit  came  under 
my  observation.    One  day  a  big  beachmaster,  eight  The  white 
or  nine  years  of  age,  a  semi-albino  and  therefore  seal 
easily    recognized,    landed   on   Gorbatch    Rookery, 
where  for  nearly  a  week  he  savagely  tried  to  break 
in.     But  the  whole  shore  being  already  preempted 
by  older  bulls,  he  was  forced  to  retire  so  far  back 
that  no  females  joined  him,  and  in  disgust  he  finally 
crossed  the  narrow  peninsula  to  the  Reef  Rookery, 
where  his  luck  was  better. 

At  the  outset  of  our  labors  it  seemed  to  me  that  a 
"Fur  Seal  Census"  was  a  pressing  necessity.  We 
therefore  undertook  the  first  actual  count  of  the 
animals  ever  made,  their  great  abundance  in  earlier 
years  having  precluded  any  previous  attempt  at 
enumeration.  To  count  the  4629  harems  from  a  Counting 
boat  in  the  sea  or  from  the  cliffs  above  proved  a  barems 
relatively  easy  matter.  With  considerable  dif- 
ficulty we  also  enumerated  the  visible  mothers, 
though  after  a  while  we  discovered  that  at  no  one 
time  were  more  than  half  of  them  actually  present, 
as  even  before  the  tardiest  arrived,  the  earliest  have 
gone  off  to  feed. 

In  each  harem  belonged  from  one  to  fifty  "cows," 
the  average  number  being  about  thirty-five.  But 
it  was  evident  that  a  trustworthy  figure  would  be 
gained  only  from  a  census  of  the  pups,  each  one  of 


The  Days  of  a  Man  [1896 

which  predicated  a  mother.  Up  to  August  this  was 
impossible  on  account  of  the  ferocity  of  the  bulls. 
At  that  time,  however,  the  young  began  to  learn  to 
swim,  and  harem  discipline  was  rapidly  relaxed. 
The  old  For  the  old  beachmasters,  having  grown  very 
fellows  hungry,  very  sleepy,  and  relatively  gentle  after  two 
months  of  fasting  and  standing  guard,  then  swam 
off  to  sea  for  food.  Meanwhile  the  eager  Polu- 
sikatchi,  who  had  watched  from  the  rocks  above, 
crowded  down  to  take  the  vacant  places,  tumbling 
hastily  into  the  sea  at  the  roar  of  a  returning  despot. 
At  this  juncture,  before  the  pups  were  able  to 
scatter  to  any  distance,  we  counted  them  with  fair 
accuracy  in  spite  of  heavy  handicaps.  Occasionally 
it  was  even  necessary  to  drive  the  mothers  into  the 
sea  in  order  to  get  sight  of  all  the  young  ones.  Con- 
trary to  some  preconceived  notions,  the  females 
soon  returned,  showing  no  evidence  of  fright. 

The  number  of  young,  and  therefore  of  breeding 
females,  we  estimated  at  143,071.  The  count  next 
year,  more  accurate  because  of  our  larger  experience, 
fixed  the  current  total  at  129,216. 

Besides  the  Fur  Seal,  several  other  interesting  ani- 
rbf  little    mals   frequent   the    Pribilofs.      Commonest   among 
Blue  FOX    these  js  the  diminutive  Blue  Fox  —  Alopex  pribilo- 
fensis.     The  long,  thick  fur  of  this  little  beast  is 
normally  gray-blue  or  dove   color   throughout   the 
year,  although  about  one  third  of  the  whole  number 
of  individuals   are  white  at   all   times  —  the   basis 
of  the  hairs,   however,   being    always    blue.      This 
creature  is  thus  a  curious  anomaly,  most  subarctic 
forms  —  ermines,  hares,  ptarmigan,  owls,  and  bunt- 
ings —  being  white  only  in  winter. 

C  S643 


CO 

00 
00 


1896]  Bad  Neighbors 

All  foxes  are  monogamous  for  life.  Alopex  makes 
its  nest  deep  down  in  crevices  of  the  lava  blocks 
along  the  shore,  where  the  young  are  born,  and  where 
they  gurgle-gurgle  in  their  throats  until  big  enough 
to  come  out  and  run  along  the  ancient  "fox  walks"  FOX  walks 
from  one  hole  to  another.  The  adult  animals  have 
a  very  high,  sharp,  rasping  note.  "Kling-g-g, 
kling-g-g-g!"  like  the  noise  of  a  "scared  buzz-saw" 
as  I  once  ventured  to  put  it. 

From  August  on,  the  Pribilof  foxes  feed  largely 
on  the  starved  or  trampled  pups  which  they  fur- 
tively steal  as  soon  as  discipline  is  sufficiently  re- 
laxed to  allow  them  to  enter  the  harems.  In  the 
height  of  the  breeding  season  it  would  surely  be 
more  than  a  fox's  life  is  worth  to  try  to  break  in. 
They  then  make  raids  on  the  chutchki  and  other  An  odd 
auks  which  abound  about  the  cliffs,  especially  on 
the  black  sea-parrot  or  tufted  puffin,  tall,  erect, 
and  dignified,  with  a  great  red  bill  apparently  made 
of  sealing  wax,  a  white  mask  over  his  face,  and  a 
white  plume  at  his  crown. 

Once  as  I  lay  without  apparent  sign  of  life  on  the 
moss  behind  remote  Vostochni,  a  little  blue  fox 
espied  me  and  ran  round  and  round  in  narrowing 
circles  until  at  last  he  got  near  enough  to  make  a 
quick  snap  at  my  rubber  boot,  meanwhile  fixing  on 
me  his  hard,  gray,  selfish  eye;  for  among  all  the  Cruel  eyes 
beasts  no  other  has  an  eye  so  cruel-cold  as  his.  But 
the  boot  being  unexpectedly  tough,  he  ran  away  as 
fast  as  he  could,  crying  "Kling-g,  kling-g,  kling-g-g!" 
while  all  the  little  foxes  went  gurgle-gurgle-gurgle 
underneath  the  rocks. 

On  Morjovi  once  lived  also  the  greatest  of  all 
Northern  beasts,  the  Walrus,  for  which,  in  fact,  the 


counte- 
nance 


The  Days  of  a  Man  £1896 

rookery  was  named.  In  habit  he  had  much  in  com- 
mon with  his  neighbor,  the  Fur  Seal,  though  never 
straying  far  from  home  even  in  midwinter.  Now 
only  his  bones  remain,  mute  witnesses  to  his  ruth- 
less extirpation  by  man. 

Vostochni  and  Morjovi  being  twelve  miles  from 

the  village,  in  the  course  of  our  investigations  I  had 

occasion  to  spend  two  nights  in  the  little  shack  hard 

by  the  latter,  the  humblest  sort  of  shelter.     But  on 

the  wall  was  nailed  a  decent  reproduction  of  the 

Trial  of  Constance  de  Beverley,  and  the  shelf  held 

Marie       a  single   book,   the   lurid   "Wormwood"   of  Marie 

coreiiiand  Corelli.      Near    Morjovi    the    Gray    Sea    Lion  — 

the  Gray  .  i  i  •  i 

Sea  Lion  kumetopias  —  a  huge  but  timorous  species,  also 
has  a  rookery.  The  males,  weighing  upward  of  a 
ton,  have  a  musical  voice  of  great  volume  like  the 
deep  tones  of  a  mighty  pipe-organ,  quite  different 
from  the  guttural  roar  of  the  beachmasters.  Across 
the  island,  beyond  Vostochni,  lives  the  true  Seal 
The  Hair  or  Hair  Seal  —  Phoca  pribilofensis  —  of  very  dif- 
Sed  ferent  nature  from  any  of  the  others.  He  makes 
very  little  noise,  and  slips  softly  into  the  sea  when 
disturbed.  He  walks  on  his  toes  like  a  dog  or  cat, 
but  his  limbs  are  bound  so  closely  to  the  body  that 
on  land  he  can  only  crawl. 


Toward  the  end  of  October,  the  rookeries  break- 
ing up  and  our  work  being  finished,  we  left  Una- 
laska  on  the  revenue  cutter  Richard  Rush.  At 
Dutch  Harbor  there  was  every  sign  of  rough  weather, 
and  appearances  grew  rapidly  worse.  To  add  for 
a  moment  to  the  captain's  anxiety,  in  Unimak  Pass 

C  566] 


1896]  Back  to  Sitka 


we  suddenly  felt  a  great  jolt  as  if  the  ship  had 
struck  a  rock;   but  it  was  soon  discovered  that  the  stor™  and 
whale,  struck  amidships,  had  more  cause  for  alarm  »£^  U( 
than  ourselves.    Just  outside  the  Aleutians,  however,  We  ?ail  as 
we   encountered   a   violent    storm   from   the   east; 
around  the  Shumagin  Islands  it  was  so  fierce  that 
the   cutter  made   no   progress  whatever.      Putting 
out  a  sheet   anchor  to  check  the   backward  drift 
and   pouring   oil   on   the   water,    Captain   Roberts 
tried,  though  unsuccessfully,  to  steam  forward  in 
the  teeth  of  the  gale.    We  thus  remained  practically 
stationary   for   two   days   and   nights.      Moreover, 
during  the  fury  of  the  storm  no  cooking  was  pos- 
sible, and  boards  were  nailed  on  our  berths  at  night 
to  hold  us  in. 

Arrived  at  last  at  Sitka  after  a  journey  of  ten 
days  instead  of  the  usual  six,  we  thought  it  the 
Promised  Land  and  Mount  Edgecombe  a  veritable 
Sinai.  At  the  little  inn  the  Joint  Commission  gave 
a  banquet  to  the  local  authorities  and  the  officers 
of  the  Rush,  though  Captain  Roberts,  finding  that 
the  original  company  numbered  thirteen,  resolutely 
refused  to  sit  down  until  an  extra  guest  was  gathered 
in.  Thompson's  after-dinner  speech  was  a  charming 
and  eloquent  one.  I  myself  touched  a  responsive 
chord  in  referring  to  "that  Greater  Britain  to  which  Greater 
all  English-speaking  people  belong."  Britain 

The  voyage  from  Sitka  south  to  Seattle  on  the 
City  of  Topeka,  again  by  way  of  the  inside  passage, 
offered  few  incidents  worth  noting.  But  passing 
through  the  long  and  narrow  Grenville  Channel  in 
a  dense  fog  made  heavier  by  smoke  from  forest 
fires,  the  boat  was  steered  by  whistle-echoes  thrown 
back  from  the  cliffs  on  either  side.  At  Seattle  the 


The  Days  of  a  Man  £1896 

commission  broke  up,  with  the  understanding,  how- 
ever, that  it  would  meet  in  Bering  Sea  the  next 
summer  for  the  special  purpose  of  making  a  relative 
comparison  of  the  two  seasons,  and  also  of  visiting 
the  Russian  rookeries. 

A  tempting  Reaching  home,  I  found  a  letter  written  by 
0/er  Gardiner  G.  Hubbard  on  behalf  of  the  board  of 
trustees  of  the  Smithsonian  Institution,  offering 
me,  as  successor  to  Dr.  Goode,  the  (combined) 
positions  of  assistant  secretary  and  director  of  the 
United  States  National  Museum,  over  which  the 
Smithsonian  has  control.  It  was  also  understood 
that  on  the  retirement  of  Dr.  Samuel  P.  Langley 
the  new  incumbent  would  succeed  him  in  the  secre- 
taryship. This  offer  of  the  most  honorable  position 
in  American  Science  was  very  tempting,  but  in  view 
of  my  obligations  toward  Stanford  University  and 
my  faith  in  its  future,  I  felt  obliged  to  decline. 
Afterward  it  was  suggested  by  one  of  the  Smith- 
sonian trustees  that  I  might  perhaps  later  see  my 
way  clear  to  accept,  and  the  matter  was  accordingly 
held  in  abeyance  for  ten  years,  Rathbun  meanwhile 
becoming  assistant  secretary.  But  in  1906  I  again 
declined  for  the  same  reasons,  intensified  by  the 
calamity  of  the  great  earthquake  which  left  me  no 
question  as  to  my  duty.  Dr.  Charles  D.  Walcott 
was  now  chosen  for  the  post,  while  Rathbun  re- 
mained as  executive  assistant. 

Within  the  week  which  followed  my  return  to 
Stanford  I  received  another  pleasant  surprise  in 
the  form  of  a  book  by  myself  almost  ready  for 
publication  without  my  having  written  a  line  of 
it.  This  came  about  in  an  interesting  way.  For 
a  year  or  two  I  had  been  telling  a  good  many  stories 
C  568  3 


1896]    "  The  Book  of  Knight  and  Barbara ' ' 

—  partly  original,  partly  travesties  on  classical  and  Stories  told 
other  tales  —  to  Knight  and  Barbara,  who  en-  *°  cbildren 
joyed  them  immensely.  Some  of  our  friends  having 
spoken  of  these  yarns  to  members  of  the  Education 
Department  interested  in  child-study,  two  graduate 
students  (Mrs.  Louise  Maitland  and  Miss  Harriet 
Hawley)  brought  a  group  of  children  to  the  house 
to  hear  some  of  the  stories.  They  were  then  taken 
down  in  shorthand,  after  which  copies  were  placed 
in  the  hands  of  scores  of  younger  pupils  in  Palo 
Alto,  Oakland,  Santa  Cruz,  and  Washington,  D.  C., 
to  be  illustrated  by  them.  More  than  a  thousand 
drawings  were  thus  collected;  from  these,  one  hun- 
dred of  the  cleverest  were  prepared  by  Bristow 
Adams  (then  editor  of  Chaparral)  for  reproduction 
with  the  stories  to  which  they  belonged.  In  that 
way  the  volume  built  itself  up,  as  it  were,  and  on 
my  return  from  Bering  Sea  came  to  me  practically 
ready  for  publication. 

As  "The   Book  of  Knight   and  Barbara"  it  at 
once  had  a  large  sale,  its  interest  lying  as  much  in 
the  pictures  as  in  my  fantastic  text.1    The  quaintest 
sketches  were  largely  by  Jenkins'  daughter  Alice;2 
the  most  finished,  by  Seward  Rathbun,  son  of  my 
old   friend   at   the    Smithsonian.     A   little   girl   at  Touthfui 
Edmonton,  Alberta,  declared  the  collection  to  be  cntlcs 
"perfectly  jake,  perfectly  peachy."     But  the  little 
daughter  of  a  Boston  friend  remarked:    "What  a 
pity  they  let   those   California  children   spoil  this 

1  Three  of  my  tales,  "How  Barbara  Came  to  Escondite,"  "The  Little  Legs 
That  Ran  Away,"  and  "The  Eagle  and  the  Blue-tailed  Skink,"  have  given 
pleasure  to  many  Stanford  grandchildren,  while  a  metrical  version  of  the  Siege 
of  Troy  has  been  the  despair  of  classicists.  Any  one  who  may  be  interested  will 
find  all  four  of  these  fancies  in  Appendix  F  (page  701)  of  the  present  volume. 

2  Now  wife  of  Frank  W.  Weymouth,  a  Stanford  professor. 

£569  3 


The  Days  of  a  Man  [1896 

nice  book!"  And  a  Chicago  child,  still  more  critical, 
asked  if  "Dr.  Jordan  spent  his  time  thinking  up 
such  things  as  that!" 

My  young  Chicago  critic  would  perhaps  have  been 
better  pleased  with  certain  other  things  of  mine 
that  appeared  in  print  during  the  course  of  1896. 
The  Care  These  consisted  of  a  number  of  educational  addresses 
ul~  Publisned  in  book  form  under  the  title,  "The  Care 
and  Culture  of  Men,"  a  phrase  borrowed  from  Emer- 
son's dictum  that  "the  best  political  economy  is 
the  care  and  culture  of  men."  This  volume  met 
with  a  considerable  sale,  especially  in  the  reading 
circles  of  California.  The  plates  being  burned  in 
the  fire  of  1906,  a  new  edition,  somewhat  enlarged, 
was  issued  in  1910,  the  separate  articles  being  also 
bound  as  booklets.  And  to  anticipate  a  little,  in 
1903  I  put  forth  another  collection  of  essays  of 
similar  motive,  entitled  "The  Voice  of  the  Scholar." 
But  while  the  plates  and  unsold  copies  of  this  work 
too  were  destroyed  in  1906,  it  has  never  been  re- 
printed. 

urbe  in-       In  1896  I  published  also  "The  Story  of  the  In- 
numerabie   numerable   Company."     Besides   the   name   essay, 

Company  '  .       ^       J  .          i     •        ,        i       r  r 

afterward  twice  reprinted  in  book  form,  first  as 
"The  Wandering  Host"  and  later  as  "The  In- 
numerable Company,"  under  which  title  the  al- 
legory is  best  known,  this  volume  contains  an  ac- 
count of  the  Passion  Play  at  Oberammergau,  the 
Spanish  missions  of  California,  the  Hospice  of  the 
Great  St.  Bernard,  the  career  of  Ulrich  von  Hutten, 
and  the  relation  of  Thoreau  to  John  Brown. 

At  Christmas  I  was  called  to  Washington  to  present 
a  preliminary  report  on  the  work  of  the  preceding 

n  5703 


1896]       A  Joint  High  Commission 

summer,  and  to  discuss  the  general  situation.  Mean- 
while another  commission  under  direction  of  the 
Department  of  State  1  was  selected  to  deal  with  the 
diplomatic  phases  of  the  case,  the  American  members 
being  Foster,  Hamlin,  and  myself,  with  Clark 
again  as  secretary.  This  group,  it  was  arranged, 
would  meet  at  Washington  the  following  December 
in  conjunction  with  representatives  of  Great  Britain, 
Russia,  and  Japan. 

Mr.  Foster,  one  of  our  highest  authorities  on  in-  Foster  ^  and 
ternational  law,  was  at  the  same  time  perhaps  the  Hamlm 
most  sagacious  and  efficient  American  diplomatist 
of  his  day  —  a  man,  moreover,  of  fine  personality 
in  other  ways.  Following  Elaine's  resignation  from 
Harrison's  Cabinet  in  June,  1892,  he  served  as  Secre- 
tary of  State  for  the  better  part  of  a  year.  I  had 
known  him  as  the  most  distinguished  graduate  of 
Indiana  University,  and  our  relations  had  long  been 
friendly.  Hamlin  is  a  well-known  and  popular 
Boston  attorney.  My  acquaintance  with  him  dates 
from  our  interview  at  Stanford  the  previous  spring. 

Conferring  together,  we  agreed  that  the  crux  of 
the  American  case  from  beginning  to  end  lay  in 
the  defense  of  the  herd  against  pelagic  sealing. 
For  the  major  part  of  this,  Canadian  vessels  from 
Victoria  were  responsible;  but  a  large  contingent 
went  out  regularly  from  San  Francisco.  The  most  r0  end 
important  result  of  our  discussion,  therefore,  was  ***?& 

rr  •  •  t  i    sealing 

an  ettort  to  give  our  contention  a  better  moral 
status,  a  result  obtained  through  the  passing  of  a 
law  by  Congress  prohibiting  all  killing  at  sea  by 
American  citizens.  A  second  statute  attacked  the 

1  The  Commission  of  Investigation,  as  already  implied,  was  responsible  to 
the  Secretary  of  the  Treasury. 


The  Days  of  a  Man  £1896 

profits  of  the  industry  by  forbidding  the  admittance 
of  pelagic  skins  to  the  United  States;  this  involved 
a  system  of  registration  of  sealskin  garments,  bur- 
densome to  travelers  but  effective  in  depriving  the 
Canadian  sealers  of  their  best  market  —  a  dis- 
advantage largely  offset,  however,  by  the  steady 
upward  trend  of  prices  in  general,  due  to  war-in- 
flation in  1898  and  1899. 

Richard  In  the  course  of  my  stay  in  Washington,  I  one 
oiney  evening  dined  with  Richard  Olney,  Secretary  of 
State,  a  strong,  forthright  man  of  excellent  ability 
whom  I  very  much  admired,  despite  a  certain  dis- 
approval of  his  abrupt  insistence  in  the  Venezuela 
matter.  But  at  that  time,  as  at  others  in  the  history 
of  our  relations  with  Britain,  it  may  have  been  neces- 
sary to  stand  up  before  the  Mother  Country.  For 
British  diplomacy  has  often  been  based  merely  on 
the  assumption  that  whatever  Britain  demands  is 
necessarily  right.  In  this  case,  however,  London's 
claim  was  substantially  correct,  Olney's  purpose 
being  only  to  have  the  situation  clarified  by  thorough 
investigation. 

Being  seated  at  Mr.  Olney's  right,  I  had  the  wel- 
come opportunity  of  explaining  to  him  the  inside 
story   of   the    Government    Suit    against    Stanford 
University,  a  matter  in  which  he  was  naturally  in- 
terested.    I  was  amused  by  an  anecdote  he  related 
Li  Hung    of  Li  Hung  Chang,  who  had  recently  visited  Wash- 
ed      ington  on  a  tour  of  the  world.    "How  much  do  you 
get?"  asked  the  Oriental  diplomat.     "My  salary  is 
$6000,"  said  Olney.    "Yes,  I  know,"  said  Li;   "but 
how  much  do  you  get?" 


C  572] 


McKinlef  s  Administration 


Fur  Seal  matters  having  called  me  again  to  Wash- 
ington in  the  spring  of  1897,  I  was  present  at  the 
inauguration  of  McKinley,  and  received  soon  after 
an  invitation  to  dinner  at  the  White  House  to  meet 
the  new  Cabinet.  McKinley's  associates  impressed 
me  less  favorably  as  a  whole  than  Cleveland's  Cabinet 
Cabinet,  but  some  of  them  had  both  character  and 
force.  Secretary  Long  of  the  Navy,  ex-governor  of 
Massachusetts,  by  whom  I  sat,  seemed  to  be  a  man 
of  marked  ability.  Lyman  J.  Gage,  Secretary  of 
the  Treasury,  I  came  later  to  know  well  and  to  hold 
in  high  esteem.  Alger  of  the  War  Department  un- 
fortunately soon  had  on  his  hands  the  Spanish  War, 
involving  a  strain  for  which  he  was  quite  unfitted. 

John  Sherman,  Secretary  of  State,  with  whom  I  John 
afterward  had  many  dealings,  was  always  interest-  Sberman 
ing,  although  then  very  old  and  forgetful  as  to  cur- 
rent happenings.  It  was  under  his  general  direction 
that  our  commission  carried  on  its  work,  about  which 
I  had  frequent  interviews  with  him;  but  he  often 
forgot  why  I  was  in  Washington.  His  appointment 
as  Secretary  was  apparently  a  piece  of  political 
bargaining.  He  had  long  been  Senator  from  McKin- 
ley's own  state,  and  the  President  urged  him  to 
enter  the  new  Cabinet,  "which  would  not  be  com- 
plete unless  headed  by  the  most  distinguished  son 
of  Ohio."  Sherman  having  consented,  Mark  Hanna, 
McKinley's  adviser  and  financial  backer,  was 
promptly  elected  to  the  senatorship. 

Sherman's  inability  to  deal  with  current  details 
(though  he  still  held  a  firm  grasp  on  principles)  soon 

C573  3 


The  Days  of  a  Man  £1897 

became  painfully  evident,  especially  to  his  many 
friends.  In  1897,  when  the  annexation  of  Hawaii 
was  contemplated,  he  assured  the  Japanese  minister, 
Hoshi,  —  then  leaving  for  home,  —  that  nothing  of 
the  sort  would  be  done,  and  Hoshi  so  cabled  his 
home  government.  But  before  he  reached  Tokyo, 
annexation  was  already  definitely  arranged  without 
Sherman's  approval.  On  William  R.  Day,  a  quiet 
anc^  well-informed  attorney  then  Assistant  Secre- 
tary of  State,  the  President  largely  depended.  At 
one  time  (as  I  was  told  on  what  seemed  good  au- 
thority) McKiniey  reproached  Sherman  for  talking 
so  freely  with  reporters  concerning  affairs  in  his 
department:  "Don't  you  know  that  you  are  em- 
barrassing Mr.  Day?"  At  this  Sherman  broke  out: 
"Who  the  devil  is  Mr.  Day?  I  thought  he  was  a 
clerk  in  my  office." 

Nevertheless,  Sherman  had  broad  views  on  national 
matters,  and  he  was  distinctly  a  master  in  finance. 
His  relations  with  Lincoln  had  been  especially  in- 
timate; nothing,  moreover,  gave  him  greater  pleas- 
ure than  to  talk  of  their  friendship.  Soon  realizing 
the  impossibility  of  his  position,  he  resigned  the 
secretaryship,  to  be  succeeded  by  Day,  who,  how- 
ever, shortly  withdrew  and  was  afterward  appointed 
by  Roosevelt  to  the  Supreme  Court.  Upon  Day's 
resignation  McKiniey  put  John  Hay  at  the  head  of 
the  State  Department,  where  he  remained  until  his 
death  in  1905. 

John  Hay  Hay  was  the  most  scholarly  as  well  as  the  most 
internationally  minded  of  all  who  in  recent  times 
have  served  our  country  in  that  position.  A  poet 
and  historian  of  keen  mind  and  a  charming  per- 
sonality, he  was  also  an  efficient  executive,  ably 

C  5743 


1897]  John  Hay  at  Stanford 

solving  many  tangled  problems.  As  private  secre- 
tary to  Lincoln  he  had  become  thoroughly  familiar 
with  American  affairs,  and  as  minister  to  Vienna 
and  later  to  London  —  from  which  latter  post  he 
was  called  to  Washington  —  equally  well  versed 
on  conditions  in  Europe.  In  1899,  accompanying 
McKinley  to  California,  he  made  an  admirable  dis- 
course at  Stanford.  Introducing  him,  and  referring 
to  his  message  on  "the  open  door,"  I  was  tempted 
to  quote  —  but  did  not  —  the  following  verses  ad- 
dressed to  him  by  a  veteran  of  the  Civil  War: 

I  cooked  a  dinner  in  war  time 
You  ate  and  praised  one  day; 
You  liked  my  work  and  said  so, 
And  I  like  yours,  John  Hay. 

On  this  occasion  McKinley  was  to  have  been  the 
guest  of  the  University,  but  detained  in  San  Jose 
by  his  wife's  illness,  asked  Hay  to  take  his  place. 
As  a  welcome  for  the  President,  Cecil  Marrack,  a 
senior  student,  had  prepared  a  careful  speech;  spefch 
this  he  so  adroitly  modified  to  suit  the  unexpected 
conditions  as  to  call  out  a  special  word  of  praise 
from  Hay. 

It  will  be  remembered  that  McKinley  fell  victim  "Lessons 
to  the  inchoate  rage  of  a  crazy  anarchist,  sensa- 
tional  journalism  having  fed  the  frenzy  of  the  as- 
sassin who  sought  revenge  on  society  by  destroying 
its  accepted  head.    As  I  said  at  the  time:1 

There  is  a  cowardly  discontent  which  leads  a  man  to  blame 
all  failure  on  his  prosperous  neighbor  or  on  society  at  large  — 

1  "  Lessons  of  the  Tragedy,"  delivered  before  the  students  of  Stanford  Uni- 
versity. 

C  575  3 


The  Days  of  a  Man  £1897 

as  if  a  social  system  existed  apart  from  the  men  who  compose 
it.    Under  Democracy  all  violence  is  treason.    Whosoever  heaves 
a  rock  at  a  scab  teamster,  whosoever  fires  a  shot  at  the  Presi- 
dent of  the  United  States,  is  an  enemy  of  the  Republic,  guilty 
of  high  treason.    The  central  fact  of  all  Democracy  is  agree- 
We  make     ment  with  the  Law.    It  is  our  law  and  we  made  it.    If  desirable 
the  laws      we  can  unmake  it,  but  by  compact  of  Democracy,  any  change 
must  be  brought  about  by  the  methods  of  peace  and  order. 

On  September  13,  1901,  I  stood  for  a  moment  at 
the  corner  of  Market  and  Third  streets  in  San  Fran- 
cisco, reading  the  posted  bulletins  from  Washington 
foreshadowing  McKinley's  death.  A  little  old  crone 
of  a  woman,  similarly  engaged,  remarked:  "The 
President  will  die."  "Yes,"  I  answered  sympa- 
thetically; "he  is  dying."  At  this  she  turned  on 
me  savagely:  "You  did  it!  You  know  you  did; 
you  look  it!"  She  then  backed  off  in  front  of  a 
moving  car  and  would  have  been  instantly  crushed 
had  not  a  young  man  in  naval  uniform  jerked  her 
away  as  quick  as  a  flash  —  after  which  they  both 
melted  into  the  moving  crowd. 

But  this  is  to  anticipate  by  many  years,  and  I 
must  now  return  to  other  matters. 


C  5763 


CHAPTER  TWENTY-THREE 


IN  early  June,  1897,  Clark  and  I  left  for  our  second  r0  Bering 
visit  to  the  Pribilofs.  Accompanying  us  this  time  Sea  once 
went  six  scientific  students  as  volunteer  assistants: 
Elmer  E.  Farmer  (afterward  Elmer  Creighton)  and 
Howard  S.  Warren,  electricians,  Bristow  Adams, 
artist,  Arthur  W.  Greeley  and  Robert  E.  Snodgrass, 
zoologists,  all  from  Stanford;  and  from  the  Uni- 
versity of  Washington  Trevor  Kincaid,  zoologist. 
These  young  men  were  to  carry  out  certain  experi- 
ments in  electric  branding,  and  fencing-in  of  the 
young  males  —  two  schemes  which  had  been  pro- 
posed a  few  years  before  by  Townsend  and  True. 
Dr.  Thomas  D.  Wood  also  had  joined  our  group 
with  a  view  to  special  studies  of  his  own,  and  Mrs. 
Wood  and  Mrs.  Jordan  went  as  far  as  Sitka,  where 
the  Albatross  was  held  in  readiness  for  the  com- 
mission. 

Up  to  that  point  we  traveled  by  the  excursion 
steamer  Queen,  passing  again  through  the  superb 
Alexander  Archipelago.  On  the  Queen  we  found  a 
pleasant  little  company  from  Columbia  University, 
led  by  my  friend  and  colleague  in  Biology,  Dr.* 
Edmund  B.  Wilson.  At  Juneau,  the  largest  town 
in  Alaska  and  its  modern  capital,  we  met  Ogilvie, 
a  Canadian  surveyor  who  had  just  come  over  the 
White  Pass  with  marvelous  stories  of  the  discovery 
of  gold  along  the  Upper  Yukon,  in  the  district  since  Klondike 
known  as  the  Klondike.  Immediately  a  large  part  gold 
of  the  population  of  the  town  moved  northward 

C5773 


The  Days  of  a  Man  1:1897 

by  way  of  Skagway  or  Dyea  over  the  forbidding 
mountains  to  Lakfe  Lindeman  and  Lake  Labarge. 
Of  this  amazing  episode  I  shall  have  more  to  say  in 
connection  with  my  own  visit  to  the  Yukon  in  1903. 
The  culminating  experience  of  our  trip  on  the 
^ueen  was  a  visit  to  the  incomparable  Muir  Glacier, 
Glacier  ^^  jts  glittering  front  of  solid  blue  ice  a  mile  or 
more  across  and  some  500  feet  high.  Walking  over 
the  surface,  we  recalled  how  John  Muir  had  traversed 
it  with  the  dog  Stickeen,  as  described  in  his  striking 
tale  of  "A  Dog  and  a  Glacier." 

Arrived  at  Sitka,  I  hit  an  unexpected  snag.  It 
appeared  that  Captain  John  J.  Brice,  then  hold- 
over Commissioner  of  Fisheries,  had  sent  per- 
emptory orders  to  Captain  Moser  to  receive  on  the 
Albatross  no  one  except  the  commission  of  1896. 
This  action  was  of  course  intended  to  bar  out  my 
student  assistants  (who,  by  the  way,  served  without 
pay)  and  to  embarrass  me  as  much  as  possible. 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  however,  there  was  probably 
nothing  personal  about  Brice's  attitude.  Apparently 
it  was  only  part  of  his  desultory  feud  with  "those 
Smithsonian  fellows."  He  himself  was  a  retired 
naval  officer  without  technical  fitness  for  the  posi- 
tion, to  which,  indeed,  he  had  been  appointed  in 
disregard  of  the  law  providing  that  the  Fish  Com- 
missioner  should  be  a  scientific  expert.  One  of 
President  Cleveland's  few  weaknesses  was  his  dis- 
trust  of  scientific  attainments;  this  had  led  him  to 
appoint  an  untrained  amateur  as  successor  to  Baird, 
Goode,  and  MacDonald. 

Brice's  tenure  of  office  was  very  short,  the  in- 
coming Republican  administration  being  quite  aware 


1897]       The  New  Fish  Commissioner 

of  his  failure  to  meet  the  terms  of  the  law.  But 
the  new  standards  were  not  appreciably  higher, 
as  the  Fish  Commission  was  listed  among  the 
spoils  of  office.  Having  some  warning  of  this  fact, 
I  went  to  Mr.  McKinley  and  made  a  personal  ap- 
peal for  the  selection  of  some  one  both  of  scientific 
standing  and  in  touch  with  fishery  interests.  The 
President  seemed  impressed  by  my  appeal,  but  at 
last  he  said:  "The  fact  is,  Dr.  Jordan,  I  have  prom- 
ised that  place  to  Steve  Elkins." 

In  due  time,  therefore,  Senator  Elkins'  man,  Bowers 
Mr.  George  M.  Bowers  of  West  Virginia,  was  ap- 
pointed. Strangely  enough,  however,  five  years 
later  (my  opinion  being  asked)  I  advised  President 
Roosevelt  and  Secretary  Oscar  S.  Straus  to  retain 
him.  For  although  a  local  politician  with  no  knowl- 
edge whatever  of  fisheries,  Bowers  had  tact  as  well 
as  administrative  ability.  He  accordingly  sur- 
rounded himself  with  good  men  from  whom  he  was 
always  ready  to  take  advice,  as  well  as  from  two 
others,  Alexander  Agassiz  and  myself.  During  his 
administration,  Dr.  Hugh  M.  Smith  served  as  As- 
sistant Commissioner  and  Evermann  as  chief  Scien- 
tific Expert,  having  charge  later  of  fishery  interests 
in  Alaska. 

Elkins  was  an  active  political  figure  in  those  days,  "Stae 
a  "Stalwart"  as  the  phrase  went,  a  big,  jolly,  ro-  Elkins 
bust  fellow  not  troubled  with  idealism.    One  of  his 
former  secretaries,  a  slender,  wiry  young  man,  told 
me  of  an  amusing  little   incident  which  occurred 
when  he  was  traveling  on  the  Senator's  railway  pass; 
the  train  conductor  having  looked  at  the  card  and 
then  at  him,  said:    "Lord,   Steve,  how  you  have 
swunk!"    Which  reminds  me  of  a  similar  story  re- 

CS793 


The  Days  of  a  Man 


£897 


lated  by  Vernon  Kellogg.  While  still  in  the  early 
twenties  and  no  doubt  looking  even  younger  than 
he  was  on  account  of  a  generally  boyish  appearance, 
Kellogg  served  as  state  entomologist  of  Kansas.  As 
such  he  carried  a  free  railway  pass  about  the  state  — 
forfeited,  of  course,  if  used  by  any  one  else.  One 
conductor  looked  him  all  over  and  remarked  forcibly: 
"You  tell  your  paw  he'd  better  look  out!" 

to  Returning  now  to  our  dilemma  at  Sitka,  Captain 
the  rescue  Moser  settled  the  matter  by  ignoring  Brice's  order 
and  falling  back  on  instructions  given  by  the  Navy 
Department  in  1896,  to  the  effect  that  he  should 
transport  the  commission  to  the  Pribilofs  and  render 
all  possible  assistance.  He  also  figured  that  no 
charge  of  insubordination  would  be  brought,  as  the 
Commissioner  would  never  venture  to  make  his  own 
telegram  public. 

The  difficulty  being  satisfactorily  adjusted,  we 
proceeded  on  our  way.  At  the  village  of  St.  Paul, 
Kodiak  Island,  where  we  passed  the  night  on  shore, 
a  supper  of  bread  and  milk,  followed  by  sleep  in 
regular  beds,  was  much  appreciated.  We  next 
steamed  through  the  Straits  past  Afognak  (a  large 
island  set  apart  by  President  Harrison  as  a  Govern- 
ment Reservation  for  the  breeding  of  salmon  and 
sea  birds)  and  then  came  to  Karluk,  the  most  im- 
portant village  of  Kodiak,  at  the  mouth  of  the 
Karluk,  a  noble  salmon  river,  outlet  of  a  large  lake 
bearing  the  same  name.  Here  a  bitter  controversy 
had  been  raging  between  two  cannery  companies, 
the  Alaska  Packers'  Association  and  the  Pacific 
Steam  Whaling  Company  established  across  Shelikof 
Strait  on  the  mainland.  The  situation  was  very 


An 

agreeable 

change 


1897]  A  Ruinous   Feud 

tense   and   seemed  to  warrant   Kipling's   assertion 
that 

There's  never  a  law  of  God  nor  man  runs  north  of  fifty- 
three. 

Indeed,  more  than  once  the  heights  above  Karluk  War  at 
had  been  fortified  by  the  local  canners,  injunctions  Karluk 
then  being  laid  with  the  rifle.  En  revanche,  "Scar- 
faced  Charley"  of  Chignik,  a  noted  fighter,  was 
sent  over  with  his  band  to  capture  and  hold  the 
beach;  for  by  law  the  right  to  fish  belonged  to  who- 
ever was  actually  drawing  nets.  This  involved 
operating  them  day  and  night  throughout  the  season, 
a  system  ruinous  to  the  salmon  run,  as  it  permitted 
relatively  few  spawning  individuals  to  ascend  what 
had  originally  been  the  finest  salmon  river  in  the 
world. 

Earlier  that  summer,  while  one  set  of  men  was 
making  a  haul  on  the  beach,  a  rival  steamer  cast 
anchor  beside  the  net  and  then  moved  away,  tear- 
ing its  web  to  pieces.  This  naturally  led  to  reprisals; 
so  when  a  larger  vessel  of  the  invading  company 
afterward  anchored  off  Karluk,  a  net  was  cast 
around  it,  hauling  it  to  shore,  where  only  capitula- 
tion saved  it  from  wreck.  But  when  we  arrived  the 
two  corporations  had  arranged  a  truce  which  ap- 
parently lasted  until  better  statutes  were  provided. 

At  Belkofski,  a  forlorn  little  Russian  town  on 
the  Alaskan  Peninsula,  we  stopped  for  a  day,  find- 
ing there  a  most  distressing  condition  due  to  the 
extirpation  of  the  Sea  Otter  —  Latax  lutris  — 
practically  the  sole  dependence  of  the  people,  who 
had  formerly  lived  by  the  sale  of  its  skins.  This 
situation  was  the  result  of  continuous  criminal 

n  581  3 


The  Days  of  a  Man  £1897 

negligence  on  the  part  of  our  Government.  When 
The  Sea  we  took  possession  of  Alaska  in  1867,  the  Sea  Otter, 
Otter  a  unique  and  valuable  animal,  was  still  abundant. 
In  early  Russian  times  it  had  swarmed  everywhere 
in  the  North,  even  ranging  sparsely  as  far  south  as 
Point  Concepcion.  Up  to  American  occupation  it 
was  taken  mainly  with  spears  by  natives  and  only 
in  scant-venturing  skin-boats:,  a  method  not  im- 
mediately ruinous.  The  Americans  and  Canadians, 
however,  used  rifles  from  the  decks  of  schooners,  so 
that  very  few  animals  escaped. 

At  the  time  of  our  visit  the  species  was  practically 
extinct  about  the  Alaskan  Peninsula 1  and  the 
Aleuts  were  virtually  starving,  their  sole  remaining 
resource  being  fish,  on  which  alone  man  cannot  in- 
definitely subsist. 

Much  gold  In  strange  contrast  to  this  human  wretchedness, 
but  no  food  the  Russian  priest  showed  us  a  golden  communion 
service  brought  from  Moscow  in  days  of  plenty. 
This  the  natives  dared  not  touch,  nor  could  they 
have  found  a  market  anywhere  within  reach.  More- 
over, there  was  nothing  to  buy,  for  when  the  Otter 
failed,  the  Commercial  Company  which  had  fur- 
nished staples  necessarily  abandoned  its  agencies. 
Elsewhere  along  the  coast  conditions  were  said  to  be 
even  worse  than  at  Belkofski. 

A  Treas-       On  my  next  trip  to  Washington  I  laid  the  matter 

ury  order    jjefore  Secretary  Gage  and,  at  his  request,  drew  up 

an  order  of  the  Treasury  prohibiting  the  killing  of 

Sea  Otter  by  means  of  firearms,  or  from  any  vessels 

except  canoes.     Such  a  decree  should  have  been 

1  Individuals  were  occasionally  taken  in  out-of-the-way  places  in  both 
Alaska  and  Kamchatka.  At  Bering  Island,  later  that  summer,  I  was  offered 
a  fresh  skin  for  $1200. 

n  582  3 


18973        Tragic  Neglect  of  Alaska 

promulgated  twenty  years  before,  when  that  mag- 
nificent animal  was  even  then  rapidly  verging  on 
extinction.  Unfortunately,  also,  the  Secretary's 
jurisdiction  reached  only  to  the  three-mile  limit. 
Shooting  in  the  open  ocean  continued  therefore  until 
1911,  when  a  treaty  to  which  I  shall  later  refer 
brought  the  Sea  Otter  under  international  pro- 
tection. I  have  recently  learned  from  Mr.  Hanna 
that  it  has  increased  in  numbers  by  about  25  per 
cent  since  1910;  in  his  judgment,  however,  it  will 
take  fifty  years  to  reestablish  the  species. 

The  tragic  neglect  of  all  national  resources  in  our  Costly  dis 
Russian  Purchase  led  me  to  utter  a  public  warning  regafd  °f 

i        r  i       •    i         T  r    i       TT    •       i   n  national 

as  to  the  future  colonial  policy  ot  the  United  btates.  resources 
Under  the  title,  "Colonial  Lessons  of  Alaska,"1 
I  dealt  with  the  evils  of  "governmental  pathology, 
as  exemplified  in  the  history  of  Alaska."  I  then  ex- 
plained in  detail  the  nation's  disastrous  neglect  of 
the  Salmon,  Fur  Seal,  and  Sea  Otter,  and  its  utter 
disregard  for  the  welfare  of  the  natives.  As  already 
stated,  my  paper  chanced  to  attract  the  attention 
of  Roosevelt  who,  after  becoming  President,  de- 
voted himself  with  characteristic  energy  to  the 
betterment  of  conditions. 

During  our  run  from  Belkofski  to  the  Pribilofs, 
the  only  happening  of  note  was  the  captain's  dif- 
ficulty in  finding  Unimak  Pass  in  the  dense  fog 
which  enveloped  the  islands,  an  incident  leading  us 
to  appreciate  more  keenly  the  amazing  geographical 
instinct  of  the  Fur  Seal. 

Upon  landing  us  at  St.  George,  the  Albatross 
returned  at  once  to  southeastern  Alaska,  where 
Moser  and  Townsend  began  an  investigation  of  the 

1  The  Atlantic  Monthly,  November,  1898. 

CS83  3 


The  Days  of  a  Man  [1897 

various  salmon  rivers  —  a  work  resumed  by  Ever- 
mann  and  myself  in  1903.  A  few  days  later  the 
Rush,  still  at  our  disposal,  took  us  over  to  St.  Paul, 
where  we  were  soon  joined  by  Thompson  and 
Macoun,  who  had  arrived  on  the  Satellite,  a  small 
British  warship. 


Fair  The  summer  of  1897  was  notably  free  from  storms 

weather  an(j  y^h  more  clear  days  than  ever  before  recorded 
in  Bering  Sea.  From  St.  Paul  we  could  at  times  see 
St.  George,  some  forty  miles  away,  an  almost  un- 
precedented phenomenon.  This  was  the  season 
fortunately  chosen  by  the  amiable  Duke  of  Abruzzi 
to  attack  the  St.  Elias  Range  and  ascend  Mount 
McKinley,  the  highest  of  its  several  peaks.  These 
offer  no  serious  difficulty  other  than  their  great 
height  and  the  prevalence  of  storms,  a  menace  ag- 
gravated by  distance  from  supplies. 

A  new  The  chief  new  feature  of  our  second  summer  was 
factor  Lucas'  discovery  of  the  havoc  wrought  by  a  then 
undescribed  species  of  hookworm  among  the  fur- 
seal  pups.  For  this  factor,  however,  we  were  par- 
tially prepared,  having  the  year  before  found  three 
or  four  specimens  of  the  parasite  in  the  dissected 
body  of  a  starved  individual.  Those  Lucas  sub- 
mitted to  Dr.  Stiles,  our  highest  authority  on  para- 
sitic worms,  from  whose  response  I  quote  the  fol- 
lowing: 

The  few  specimens  which  Lucas  collected  certainly  could 
have  been  of  no  importance  in  the  economy  of  the  host,  but 
as  Uncinaria  is  a  bloodsucker  of  the  worst  type,  and  as  allied 
species  produce  serious  troubles  in  man  and  dogs,  analogy 

1:5843 


1897]  The  Hookworm 

would  imply  that  a  heavy  infection  of  the  seal  would  produce 
similar  troubles  in  that  host. ...  A  crowded  condition  of  the 
rookeries  would  render  an  epizootic  probable. 

Stiles  later  named  the  Pribilof  form  Uncinaria 
lucasi.  In  a  second  communication  he  states  the 
injuries  from  hookworm  to  be  loss  of  blood,  loss  of 
capacity  to  assimifate  nutriment  because  of  in- 
flamed tissues,  and  possibly  the  development  of  a 
specific  poison.  Subsequently,  as  I  have  earlier  in- 
dicated, he  discovered  the  appalling  ravages  of 
Uncinaria  duodenalis  among  certain  classes  in  our 
Southern  states  and  elsewhere  in  warm  regions 
and  in  mines. 

In  the  adult  form  all  species  of  Uncinaria  are 
slender,  yellowish  little  objects  about  a  third  of  an 
inch  long.  Whatever  the  host,  also,  process  and 
pathology  are  essentially  the  same.  The  minute, 
hair-like  larva  enters  the  body  through  the  suckling 
mouth  or  through  pores  of  the  skin,  ultimately 
reaching  the  upper  part  of  the  small  intestine,  to 
which  it  clings,  feeding  on  blood  and  thus  producing 
anaemia.  So  we  soon  learned  to  recognize,  by  their  Attacks  of 
sluggishness  and  general  lack  of  interest  in  life,  the 

•       .«     «  rr       •  •  r> 

pups  attacked  by  Uncinaria;  moreover,  most  of 
those  trampled  to  death  by  fighting  males  during 
the  breeding  season  were  thus  afflicted.  Along  the 
great  beach  of  Tolstoi  and  on  Zapadni  of  St.  Paul 
we  collected  upward  of  12,000  of  these  worm-in- 
fected animals  and  burned  the  carcasses.  But  only 
those  born  and  reared  on  the  sand  were  affected  — 
never  those  on  the  rocks  where  the  rains  wash  away 
all  excrement.  Healthy  pups  are  as  round  as  foot- 
balls after  the  first  two  or  three  weeks,  and  then 
practically  immune  to  trampling  feet. 


The  Days  of  a  Man  [1897 

Losses  from  hookworm  mainly  took  place  before 
the  month  of  August,  practically  all  later  decima- 
tion being  due  to  slaughter  of  the  mothers  feeding 
at  sea;  as  to  this  I  may  add  that  in  1897  some 
15,000  healthy  pups  were  starved  to  death.  To  get 
rid  of  the  pest,  we  filled  with  rocks  the  sand  areas 
or  "death  traps"  on  Zapadni.  It  was  impossible 
to  do  the  same  on  the  great  beach  at  Tolstoi;  but 
with  the  continued  shrinking  of  the  herd  that  stretch 
was  soon  abandoned,  the  animals  afterward  con- 
fining  themselves  to  the  rocks.  And  recent  investi- 
gators  nave  discovered  no  evidences  of  the  parasite 
anywhere  on  the  islands. 

As  already  explained,  a  part  of  our  plan  for  the 
second  summer  was  to  test  the  practicability  of 
two  suggestions  (branding  and  fencing)  made  by 
Townsend  and  True  in  their  report  of  1894. 
Branding  The  purpose  of  branding  was  to  render  all  skins 
of  young  females  commercially  valueless.  To  this 
end  we  made  use  of  an  electrical  machine  devised 
by  Mr.  Farmer;  branding  with  hot  irons  was  also 
undertaken  by  Murray,  who  had  had  large  ex- 
perience on  Western  cattle  ranges.  Both  methods 
were  successful  enough,  but  the  advantage  gained 
seemed  hardly  to  justify  the  suffering  temporarily 
entailed  on  the  animals  themselves.  Hot  irons  were, 
however,  used  later  for  the  marking  of  individuals 
in  order  to  trace  their  movements,  and  to  ascertain 
their  length  of  life.  Concerning  this  particular 
matter,  Hanna  reports  that  females  branded  by 
Clark  in  1903  appeared  on  the  rookeries  as  late  as 
1919. 
The  second  scheme,  which  proved  an  entire  failure, 

C  586] 


1897]  Fur  Seal  Psychology 

was   to   imprison   the   young   males   in   the    "Salt 
Lagoon "  (a  bottle-shaped  indentation  on  St.  Paul) 
during  the  period  of  pelagic  sealing,  and  thus  pre- 
vent   their    destruction    at    sea.      Accordingly   we  Fencing  a 
drove  a  few  thousand  into  the  little  bay,  previously  failure 
enclosed  by  a  wire  fence  some  eight  feet  high.    After 
a  time,  however,  they  became  uneasy  and  in  the 
course  of  a  week  began  to  climb  over  —  a  feat  which 
had  seemed  impossible  with  beasts  so  lacking  in 
power  of  adaptation  and  so  thoroughly  under  the 
control  of  innate  tendencies,   for  while  possessing 
the  most  highly  specialized   instincts  they  are  the 
most  unteachable  of  creatures.     Their  general  in-  The  Fur 
telligence  —  that  is,  their  power  to  choose  among  Seaj:* 

°.  t          •         i  111  stupidity 

reactions  to  external  stimulus  —  had  been  pre- 
viously tested  by  us  in  an  experiment  devised  to 
separate  the  killables  from  the  rest  of  the  holostiaki. 
For  this  operation  we  provided  three  runways 
joined  in  the  form  of  the  letter  Y,  having  an  en- 
trance chute  only  just  wide  enough  to  admit  one 
individual  at  a  time,  and  with  a  gate  across  the  base 
of  each  arm.  It  was  perfectly  easy  to  drive  the 
animals  up  to  and  along  the  lane,  but,  arrived  at 
the  barriers,  each  insisted  on  blindly  following  the 
one  before.  Nothing,  in  fact,  would  induce  him  to 
pass  through  an  open  gate  if  his  predecessor  had 
gone  by  way  of  a  closed  one,  and  he  would  stubbornly 
push  against  the  latter  until  it  was  opened. 

The  stupidity  of  the  Fur  Seal  under  these  new  His 
conditions   thus    contrasted    strongly   with   its    in-  Uachfbl* 
fallible  geographic  instinct,  and  also  with  the  adapt- 
able cleverness  under  domestication  of  its  nearest 
cousin,  the  Brown  Sea  Lion  of  California  —  Zalo- 
pbus  —  which    is    almost   as  teachable   as   a   dog. 

C5873 


"The  Days  of  a  Man  [1897 

Furthermore,  on  the  killing  grounds  the  young 
males  are  wholly  apathetic,  not  paying  the  slightest 
attention  to  the  slaughter  of  their  comrades.  And 
near  the  harems  no  notice  is  taken  so  long  as  the 
observer  stands  still.  If  he  moves  at  all,  however, 
the  herd  is  quickly  excited,  the  females  rushing 
into  the  sea,  the  males  angrily  standing  their  ground. 
When  one  approaches  near  enough,  the  beachmaster 
makes  a  savage  lunge ;  but  he  never  pursues  or  moves 
more  than  a  rod  or  so  from  his  stand,  for  to  leave 
Short  it  is  perhaps  never  to  recover  it  again.  After  the 
memories  disturber  comes  to  rest,  everything  quiets  down, 
and  within  an  hour  all  are  back  in  their  proper  places. 
These  facts  I  mention  because  of  outcry  in  certain 
quarters  against  alleged  "breaking  up  of  the  rook- 
eries" by  driving  the  animals  into  the  water. 

On  St.  Paul  and  St.  George,  as  already  stated, 
our  final  and  fairly  accurate  count  of  the  pups  esti- 
mated their  number  and  therefore  the  number  of 
breeding  females  at  129,216.  I  myself  enumerated 
so  many  animals  that  I  began  to  count  endless 
"pods"  of  pups  in  my  dreams. 

On  the  Meanwhile  the  Satellite  had  stayed  around,  sharing 
"Satellite"  ^fa  duties  of  the  patrol,  and  about  the  middle  of 
August  Thompson  and  I  took  passage  in  her  to  the 
Commander  Islands  for  inspection  of  the  Russian 
herds.  The  voyage  was  long  and  tedious,  the  vessel 
being  neither  swift  nor  luxurious.  Indeed,  in  the 
British  navy  —  so  at  least  I  was  told  —  there  is  no 
effort  to  make  even  the  commanding  officer  com- 
fortable, lest  he  become  effeminate;  Captain  Allen's 
quarters,  for  example,  were  over  the  screw  and  were 
extremely  plain.  My  evenings  I  used  to  spend  there 

C  588  3  " 


1897]          The  Commander  Islands 

listening  to  his  varied  stories  of  seas  and  seaports. 
Beginning  as  a  youth  with  no  schooling,  he  had 
gradually  risen  to  the  command  of  a  second-rate 
man-of-war.    At  bottom  a  simple-hearted  and  kindly  British 
man,  he  nevertheless  gave  orders  in  a  loud  voice  so  dlsclPlinf 
that  "every  petty  officer's  knees  should  knock  to- 
gether "    when    he    strode    forth   on    deck.      "The 
proudest  moment  in  his  life"  was  when  he  ceased 
to  be  a  subordinate  and  could  say,  "Thank  God, 
Pm  a  commander!" 

On  the  Satellite,  gin  and  whisky  were  much  in 
evidence,  several  of  the  officers  taking  nips  at  in- 
tervals throughout  the  day.  But  the  master  gunner, 
one  of  the  most  competent  men  on  board,  confided 
to  me  his  firm  belief  that  serving  grog  to  sailors  — 
a  part  of  his  own  duty  —  was  a  most  mischievous 
custom. 

Our  first  stop  was  at  Nikolski  on  Bering  Island, 
the  larger  of  the  two  composing  the  Commander 
group.  Nikolski  was  built  by  the  Russian  au- 
thorities to  house  the  Aleuts  employed  at  the  Sever- 
noye  (north)  Rookery,  which,  by  the  way,  is  the 
largest  in  any  sea;  being  about  twenty  miles  away, 
it  is  commonly  reached  by  sleds  drawn  by  noisy 
Siberian  dogs  seemingly  but  half  tamed  and  very 
wolf-like.  The  little  town  is  surpassingly  gay  with  The  gay 
red,  yellow,  green,  and  blue,  each  house  being 
painted  in  one  or  more  rainbow  tints,  while  on  the 
parti-colored  church  no  joyous  hue  has  been  over- 
looked. 

The  quaint,  bright-colored  shawls  worn  by  the 
women  caught  my  eye,  but  having  bought  a  few 
of  them  as  curiosities  from  a  remote  land,  I  noticed 
on  the  box  from  which  they  were  taken  the  words 

C  5893 


The  Days  of  a  Man  £1897 

"MADE  IN  GERMANY."    Certain  foods,  too,  are  im- 
ported, the  good  thick  soup  served  by  the  agent  in 
charge  coming  from  Chicago,  where  it  is  prepared 
luscious     to  suit  the  Russian  taste.     But  the  deep  pies  of 
dishes        re(j  saimon  an(j  the  entrees  of  roasted  teal  ducks, 
flanked    by  blueberries   and   molinos,  were   native 
products. 

The  fields  about  Nikolski  blossomed  with  summer 
flowers  —  yellow  anemones,  blue  Siberian  iris,  Ice- 
land poppies,  white  chrysanthemums,  and  other 
specialties  of  the  North.  Reindeer,  introduced  from 
Siberia,  are  numerous  but  distressingly  wild,  always 
retreating  to  the  next  ridge  beyond  the  observer. 

The  Komandorski  Fur  Seal  was  the  first  made 
known  to  science,  the  notes  of  Georg  Wilhelm 
Steller,  surgeon-naturalist  of  "Commander"  Bering's 
voyage  of  1741,  having  been  printed  by  Pallas  in 
Bering's  i8n  though  not  distributed  until  1831.  At  the 
southern  end  of  Bering  Island  is  Tolstoi  Mys  or 
Cape,  a  black  headland  of  lava,  near  which  the 
St.  Peter,  Bering's  vessel,  was  wrecked  on  the  re- 
turn from  St.  Elias,  and  where  his  crew  spent  the 
winter  and  the  Commander  himself,  a  very  large 
man,  fell  ill  unto  death.  Steller  then  officially 
condemned  the  wrecked  vessel,  building  from  it  a 
small  boat  in  which  he  and  the  other  survivors 
reached  Petropaulski  on  the  mainland.  Of  Bering's 
end  Steller  wrote  as  follows: 

He  was  (as  it  were)  buried  alive;  the  sand  kept  constantly 
rolling  down  upon  him  from  the  sides  of  the  pit  and  covered  his 
feet.  At  first  this  was  removed,  but  finally  he  asked  that  it 
might  remain,  as  it  furnished  him  a  little  of  the  warmth  he  sorely 
needed.  Soon  half  his  body  was  under  the  sand  and  his  com- 
rades had  to  dig  him  out  to  give  him  a  decent  burial. 

C5903 


18973      *  Medni  (or  Copper]  Island 

The  fate  of  Steller,  the  discoverer  of  the  "four 
great  beasts"  of  Bering  Sea,  "Sea  Cow,  Sea  Otter,  1°** 
Sea  Lion,  and  Sea  Bear/'  was  even  more  tragic  than 
that  of  Bering.  Accused  in  Russia  of  some  trivial 
offense  against  the  Czar,  he  was  ordered  back  from 
Kamchatka  for  trial.  Much  of  the  way  had  to  be 
traversed  in  an  open  sleigh  drawn  by  dogs,  and  one 
night  his  guard  lingered  in  a  tavern,  he  being 
asleep  in  the  bitter  cold  outside,  where  he  was  at 
last  frozen  to  death.  Thus  died  in  his  thirty-fifth 
year  one  of  the  ablest  of  the  early  naturalists,  leav- 
ing all  his  admirable  work  to  be  made  known  by 
others. 


From  Nikolski  we  steamed  over  to  the  sister  island 
of  Medni  or  Copper,  anchoring  first  off  the  village 
of  Preobrajenski  on  the  northeast  corner.  Here  we 
encountered  the  "willie  waughs,"  as  the  sailors  call 
them  —  sudden  and  violent  gusts  of  wind  from  the 
jagged  mountain  summits,  a  phenomenon  said  to  be 
especially  characteristic  of  the  inlets  of  Tierra  del 
Fuego.  From  Preobrajenski  we  went  southward 
along  the  coast  to  the  village  of  Glinka,  where  we  Precedents 
found  the  Russian  official  very  doubtful  as  to  whether 
we  might  be  allowed  to  visit  the  rookeries  at  all, 
there  being  no  precedents  to  govern  the  case.  The 
situation  was  then  discussed  with  Thompson  over 
repeated  glasses  of  vodka,  a  beverage  not  at  all  to 
my  taste.  Meanwhile  I  slipped  out  quietly,  crossed 
the  high  and  narrow  ridge  which  there  forms  the 
backbone  of  Medni,  and  inspected  the  three  prin- 

C  S9i  3 


The  Days  of  a  Man  ^897 

cipal    rookeries,    returning   in    time    to    receive   an 
official  permit  to  make  the  examination. 

Picturesque      The  scenery  about  Glinka  is  singularly  picturesque. 

Glinka  Palata  Rookery  lies  at  the  foot  of  a  steep  cliff  with 
a  fine  waterfall.  Beyond  Palata  is  the  smaller 
Zapalata,  a  bench  of  black  pebbles,  sheltered  on  the 
ocean  side  by  jagged  rocks.  Behind  rises  a  vertical, 
crescent-shaped,  5oo-foot  lava  clifT,  from  the  edge 
of  which  the  animals  look  as  small  as  mice.  Up 
there  we  found  Loiseleuria,  a  very  pretty  rhodo- 
dendron-like shrub  resembling  the  Swiss  Alpenrose. 
At  Glinka,  the  preceding  summer,  Moser  had  had 
an  amusnlg  experience.  Stejneger  having  made  his 
visits  to  the  rookeries,  the  Albatross  put  off,  only  to 
be  recalled  by  a  signal  from  the  shore.  It  appeared 
that  the  natives  were  curious  about  a  song  very 
popular  in  Europe;  its  name  was  "Tararaboom- 
de-ay."  Would  the  captain  please  allow  the  sailors 
to  sing  and  whistle  the  tune  until  they  could  learn 
it?  Their  winter  was  very  long  and  dark,  and 
they  had  nothing  to  do  except  dance  and  play  games. 
They  had  worn  out  all  their  old  tunes,  and  were 
eager  for  a  new  one.  The  captain  complying  with 
this  novel  request,  they  contentedly  returned  to  their 
seabound  village  with  its  one  mail  a  year  sent  up 
from  the  distant  port  of  Vladivostok. 

Leaving  Glinka,  we  headed  straight  for  Una- 
laska;  on  the  way  I  wrote  my  wife  another  poem 
which,  as  these  pages  are  my  own  record  of  my  own 
life,  I  venture  to  reproduce: 


C  S923 


FUR  SEALS  ON  OLD  LANDSLIDE,  PALATA 

From  "The  Story  of  Matka" 


In  a  British  Man-o'-JFar 


KOMANDORSKI 

Sail  I  o'er  the  icy  sea 
Where  the  twin  Storm-Islands  be, 
In  a  British  man-o'-war 
(Cold  and  hard  her  bulwarks  are) 
Far  to  where  the  haughty  North 
Sends  his  eager  minions  forth 
Tugging  at  the  tawny  manes 
Of  deep-sunken  mountain  chains, 
Great  ships  greeting  with  a  laugh, 
Tossing  them  about  like  chaff; 
Never  they  since  tides  began 
Tamed  to  let  or  call  of  man. 

Komandorski,  grim,  defiant, 
Stands  before  them  like  a  giant, 
Flinging  to  the  Ocean  Chiefs 
The  stern  gauntlet  of  his  reefs. 

Crest  on  crest  redoubtable, 
Prone  at  Tolstoi's  feet  they  fall, 
And  their  haughty  hosts  become 
Impotent  in  angry  foam; 
While  the  sea-mists,  cold  and  gray, 
Whirl  their  shredded  ghosts  away 
High  to  where  the  storm-clouds  be, 
The  Valhalla  of  the  Sea! 

And  I  watch  them  as  I  lie, 
Tossing  ever  helplessly, 
In  the  British  man-o'-war 
(Cold  as  steel  her  bulwarks  are). 
Through  the  porthole  from  the  shore 
Comes  the  deep,  sonorous  roar, 
As  on  Bering's  reefs  the  surges 
Chant  the  great  Commander's  dirges. 

Then,  within  the  sordid  gloom 
Of  my  little  cabin-room  — 
All  at  once  —  a  presence  rare 

C  593 


The  Days  of  a  Man  £1897 

Lights  the  unexpectant  air. 

Thou  art  gazing  full  at  me, 

Thou  who  art  the  world  to  me; 

Eyes  I  have  the  right  to  miss, 

Lips  I  have  the  right  to  kiss; 

All  that  generous  Life  has  brought  me, 

All  there  is  sweet  Love  has  taught  me 

Smiles  at  me  from  yonder  wall  — 

Glances,  smiles,  and  that  is  all! 

What  to  me  the  haughty  North? 

What  his  minions  rushing  forth? 

What  the  huge  inchoate  ghosts 

Of  his  ever  vanquished  host? 

What  the  mighty  battle-shocks 

On  grim  Komandorski's  rocks? 

What  the  moaning  of  the  sea, 

Troubled  from  eternity? 

What  though  cold  the  bulwarks  are 

In  the  British  man-o'-war? 

Thou,  dear  heart,  hast  been  with  me! 

Thou  who  art  the  world  to  me! 

What  sweet  necromancy  brought 

Thus  the  vision  of  my  thought 

O'er  these  thousand  leagues  at  sea? 

Thus  it  chanced  —  in  gathering  night 

Just  one  wisp  of  rosy  light, 

Strayed  from  —  none  can  tell  you  where  — 

Through  the  tangling  ghosts  of  air, 

From  some  sunset,  it  may  be, 

On  the  far  Kamchatkan  Sea, 

Through  the  trailing  robes  and  gray 

Of  the  mists  along  its  way, 

Till  it,  slant  and  flutteringly, 

Fell  athwart  my  porthole  here, 

Rested  on  thy  picture,  dear. 

And  I  bless  the  wisp  of  light, 
And  I  bless  thy  sweet  Good  Night! 

594  3 


18973  Cape  Cheerful 

Having  passed  a  monotonous  week,  we  were 
much  relieved  to  enter  the  shelter  of  Unalaska 
Island,  the  first  landmark  of  which  is  the  tall  cas- 
cade of  Cape  Cheerful.  This  encouraging  name  Poetic 
suggested  a  bit  of  verse  for  the  absent  children,  and 
as  introduction  I  wrote  an  imaginary  extract  from 
Cook's  log-book  of  1778: 

CAPE  CHEERFUL 

"When  you  shall  come  to  a  great  cliff  standing  northward 
from  Makushin  the  Volcano,  and  rent  almost  from  base  to 
summit  and  from  the  midst  of  which  leaps  the  tumultuous 
Waterfall  sheer  into  the  Sea,  then,  the  fog  lifting,  you  will 
leave  the  cliff  well  to  Starboard,  and  enter  a  land-locked  haven 
called  *  Captain's  Harbor/  for  that  I  did  once  ride  out  the  winter 
there.  Whence  is  this  Headland  with  the  Waterfall  called  'Cape 
Cheerful/" 

Homeward  bound  from  the  Storm-Islands,  through  the  sullen 
Icy  Sea, 

On  our  lee 
Rise  the  savage,  swart  Smoke-Islands,  which  defy 

Sea  and  Sky, 

Hurling  back  the  waves  insistent  from  their  boulder-cumbered 
shore, 

Evermore; 

As  though  shattering  the  cloud-rack,  dark  and  tall, 

Like  a  wall, 
And  the  twin  Smoke-Islands  vanish  as  a  specter  of  the  night 

From  our  sight, 
While  the  ship  still  plunges  onward,  fog-bound  in  the  Icy  Sea. 

Suddenly, 

As  the  light  is  slowly  failing,  —  the  long  twilight  of  the  North,  — 

Rises  forth, 
As  though  shattering  the  cloud-rack,  dark  and  tall, 

The  granite  wall 

Of  the  shapeless  huge  Moss-Island  with  her  earthquake-riven 
cliff; 

Through  the  rift, 

C  595  3 


The  Days  of  a  Man  £1897 

Like  a  swift-spun  skein  of  silver  springs  intact 

The  cataract, 
From  the  riven  lava  buttress  far  into  the  Icy  Sea; 

Joyfully 
Does  it  join  the  tumbling  billows,  while  its  spray 

Drifts  away 
With  the  east  wind  to  the  leeward.    Banished  now  is  every  fear, 

All  is  clear; 

For  we  know  the  Cape  called  Cheerful,  and  it  tells  the  haven 
near. 


Like  the  fog-bound  northern  ocean  is  the  weary  course  of  life: 

Doubt  and  strife 
Hide  the  way  I  fain  would  follow;  can  I  know 

What  to  do? 
Slowly  down  my  path  I  wander,  sore  perplexed, 

Spirit-vexed, 
By  the  cloud-rack  of  conventions  o'er  us  all 

Like  a  pall. 

Thus,  with  downcast  eyes  and  somber,  come  I  to  the  garden- 
gate; 

Swift  and  straight, 
Leaping  from  a  bank  of  roses,  like  a  fetterless  cascade, 

Unafraid, 

Rush  the  children  forth  to  greet  me,  with  a  joyous  shout  of  cheer; 
Banished  now  is  all  convention,  all  vexation  and  contention, 

All  is  clear; 

I  have  found  the  "Cape  called  Cheerful,"  and  I  know  the  haven 
near. 

At  Unalaska  they  transferred  us  to  the  Pheasant, 
another  small  British  warship,  on  which  we  returned 
Sending  to  St.  Paul.  Arriving  there  and  finding  no  letters 
either  from  home  or  from  the  State  Department,  I 
sent  the  Rush  back  to  Sitka,  a  distance  of  some  1200 
miles,  for  the  mail. 

Captain   Cyrus   L.    Hooper,    a   brave   and   loyal 
officer,  then  commanded  the  Bering  Sea  Patrol  com- 

C  5963 


1897]  Cyrus   Laurin   Hooper 

posed  of  the  three  revenue  cutters,  Rush,  Perry, 
and  Corwin.1  The  duty  of  this  little  flotilla  was  to 
see  that  the  Canadian  sealing-fleet  broke  none  of 
the  provisions  of  the  Paris  Tribunal  of  1893.  To 
this  end  they  were  directed  by  our  Government  to 
overhaul  schooners  out  at  sea  and  open  up  the  barrels 
of  salted  skins  to  find  out  if  they  bore  indication  of 
having  been  put  down  before  the  end  of  the  closed 
season.  Such  inspections,  carried  out  hastily  in 
rough  weather,  were  very  irksome  to  both  parties; 
and  the  unavoidable  scattering  of  skins  about  the 
deck  naturally  made  the  operation  doubly  dis- 
tasteful to  the  Canadians.  Furthermore,  I  believe 
the  whole  operation  to  have  been  contrary  to  in- 
ternational law. 

Dealing    with    these    delicate    and    complicated 
matters,  Captain  Hooper  was  always  patient,  con-  tac.1  and 

.  ,  ,    .  i          i  •       i      •   •  11  wisdom 

siderate,  and  just,  so  that  his  decisions,  rendered  as 
a  sort  of  Court  of  Appeal  at  Unalaska,  won  the  re- 
spect of  all  concerned  in  the  acrid  controversy. 
Being  afterward  transferred  to  the  United  States 
Navy,  it  was  his  fortune  to  bring  Aguinaldo,  the 
Filipino  leader,  back  from  Hongkong,  whither  he 
had  been  banished  by  the  Spanish  governor  at 
Manila.  And  knowing  all  the  facts,  Hooper  be- 
lieved that  the  Filipino  War  (which  followed  the 
conclusion  of  peace  with  Spain)  could  have  been 
avoided  by  the  exercise  of  tact  and  consideration 
toward  Aguinaldo. 

On  each  of  the  two  cutters  under  my  immediate 
direction  was  a  young  officer  in  whom  I  took  a 

1  The  Corwin,  under  the  noted  Captain  Healy,  had  then  been  assigned  to 
the  relief  of  whalers  in  the  farther  North. 

HS973 


The  Days  of  a  Man  £1897 

personal  interest  —  Lieutenant  William  L.  Maxwell 
of  the  Rush,  and  Lieutenant  Worth  G.  Ross  of  the 
Perry.  Maxwell  had  been  a  member  of  the  Pioneer 
Class  at  Stanford,  though  he  left  to  enter  the  Rev- 
enue Service,  afterward  amalgamated  with  the  Navy 
during  the  war.  Just  twenty  years  later  he  helped 
train  my  son  Knight  for  his  commission  in  the 
naval  reserve. 

A  master  Ross,  who  rose  to  be  chief  of  the  Revenue  Service, 
seaman  possessed  extraordinary  skill  in  sleight-of-hand.  One 
day  at  table  he  explained  to  Captain  Allen,  our 
dinner  guest,  how  American  sailors  spliced  ropes. 
Taking  a  length,  cutting  it  in  two,  and  then  making 
several  passes  over  it,  he  apparently  displayed  a 
perfectly  mended  piece.  Allen  took  the  trick  at 
its  face  value,  though  evidently  puzzled  as  to  how 
it  had  been  done. 

Toward  the  middle  of  September,  university-  af- 
fairs demanding  my  presence,  I  left  St.  Paul  on  the 
Rush  somewhat  in  advance  of  the  others.  This 
time  the  passage  was  smooth  and  with  but  one  in- 
Fog  as  a  cident  worth  recalling.  As  we  approached  Cape 
0  ^lattery  at  the  mouth  of  the  Straits  of  Juan  de 
Fuca,  a  dense  fog  shut  down  so  that  we  could  neither 
see  the  headland  nor  hear  the  loud  horn  on  Tatoosh 
Island.  When  the  mist  lifted  suddenly,  the  boat 
was  almost  on  the  rocks,  and  the  horn  loudly  audible. 
Having  reported  this  incident  to  the  lighthouse 
board,  I  was  courteously  informed  that  varying 
layers  of  fog  at  times  blanketed  sound  —  a  phe- 
nomenon by  no  means  peculiar  to  Cape  Flattery. 

Arrived  at  Seattle,  I  was  astounded  at  the  amount 
and  contents  of  the  correspondence  unwittingly 

C  598  3 


1897]  The  "Sympsychograph" 

provoked  during  my  absence.  Before  leaving  for  Trying  to 
the  North  I  had  written  what  seemed  to  me  a  bit  be  funny 
of  gentle  satire  l  directed  at  certain  assertions  con- 
cerning the  supremacy,  without  intervening  agencies, 
of  mind  over  matter.  My  article  was  illustrated  by 
spurious  experiments  in  mental  photography,  sug- 
gested by  several  "fakes"  then  appearing  in  the 
current  press.  In  it,  by  way  of  ridiculing  current 
claims  to  the  photographing  of  mental  images  by 
turning  the  camera  on  the  eye,  I  imagined  a  sym- 
psychograph  ("composite-soul-picture")  with  a  lens 
of  many  facets  (like  a  fly's  eye)  from  each  of  which 
an  electrical  connection  ran  to  the  eye  of  every 
individual  in  a  group  of  people  engaged  in  framing 
an  "intensive  mental  image"  of  a  cat.  The  photo-  The 
graph  assumed  to  have  resulted  from  this  process  cat 
was  very  striking  —  a  comfortable  cat  at  rest,  with 
various  shadowy  feline  faces  in  the  background.  As 
a  matter  of  fact,  Professor  Sanford  had  made  for 
me  a  composite  of  several  negatives  of  the  pet  of 
Roble  Hall. 

The  satirical  nature  of  my  story  I  had  supposed 
sufficiently  clear,  especially  my  proposition  simi- 
larly to  photograph  "the  cat's  idea  of  man."  But 
the  scientific  minuteness  of  detail  proved  to  be 
fatally  complete,  and  a  surprising  number  of  people 
took  the  thing  seriously.  One  clergyman  even  went 
so  far  as  to  announce  a  series  of  six  discourses  on 
"the  Lesson  of  the  Sympsychograph,"  while  many 
others  welcomed  the  alleged  discovery  as  verifying 
what  they  had  long  believed,  and  an  eminent  pro- 
fessor soberly  opined  that  my  reputation  as  a  psy- 

1  "The  Sympsychograph:  A  Study  in  Impressionist  Physics";  Popular 
Science  Monthly ,  September,  1897. 

C  599  3 


The  Days  of  a  Man  £1897 

chologist  would  not  be  enhanced   by   such   discov- 
eries! 

The  excellent  editor  of  The  Popular  Science 
Monthly,  William  Jay  Youmans,  was  at  his  wit's 
end  to  explain  my  pleasantry,  which  he  had  himself 
thoroughly  understood  and  enjoyed;  he  therefore 
A  frantic  wired  me  frantically  for  an  authoritative  statement 
editor  of  what  I  was  "driving  at/'  But  I  had  simply 
meant  to  have  a  quiet  laugh  at  certain  absurdities 
heralded  as  science.  The  experience,  however, 
taught  me  two  lessons:  first,  that  very  few  people 
ever  read  a  sensational  article  through  to  the  end, 
even  much  beyond  pictures  and  headlines,  and 
second,  that  with  Dr.  Holmes,  I  should  never  again 
"dare  to  write  as  funny  as  I  can." 

Yet  in  further  "  Proceedings  of  the  Astral  Club  of 
Alcalde "  I  undertook  to  expose  various  freak  no- 
"Sdos-  tions  of  pretended  science  and  philosophy.  These 
opby"  papers  comprise  "The  Posthom  Phantom:  A  study 
in  the  Spontaneous  Activity  of  Shadows";  "The 
Teaching  of  Neminism,"  an  exposition  of  the  thesis 
nihil  nemini  nocet  or  "nothing  hurts  nobody,"  the 
assumed  motto  of  a  certain  school  of  medicine; 
"The  Plane  of  Ether,"  a  theosophical  analysis  of 
the  way  to  Nirvana;  and  "Rescue  Work  in  History," 
a  contribution  to  the  theory  that  time  and  space 
are  purely  relative.  To  the  group  of  doctrines 
satirized  in  these  essays  I  gave  the  name  of  Sci- 
osophy  —  that  is,  "shadow  wisdom." 

An  interesting  sciosophic  phantom  of  those  days, 
"The  Silent  City  of  the  Muir  Glacier,"  commanded 
the  attention  of  tourists  in  the  North.  Over  the 
surface  of  the  majestic  ice-mass  as  it  descends 
from  Mount  Fairweather  there  hovered  at  intervals, 
C  600] 


18973  "The  Silent  City" 

according  to  one  Willoughby,  a  local  woodsman, 
the  mirage  of  a  great  city  which  he  had,  in  fact, 
succeeded  in  photographing.  Among  the  many  A  profit- 
buyers  of  the  picture  there  was  much  speculation  able  hoax 
as  to  the  origin  of  the  apparition ;  was  it  Montreal, 
strangely  brought  into  the  line  of  vision,  or  some 
cathedral  town  in  the  unexplored  fastness  of  the 
St.  Elias  range,  or  perhaps  a  glimpse  of  the  Holy 
City  itself?  But  the  next  year  Gilbert,  being  in 
Alaska,  looked  up  Willoughby,  who  it  then  ap- 
peared knew  absolutely  nothing  of  photography. 
The  picture,  moreover,  was  at  once  recognized  by 
Professor  Hudson  of  Stanford  as  having  been  made 
from  a  faded  negative  of  Bristol,  England,  his  former 
home. 

Upon  my  return  to  the  University  I  received  the 
report  of  an  expedition  I  had  sent  to  Guadalupe,  a 
rocky,  uninhabited,  and  unprotected  island  off  the 
northwest  coast  of  Mexico,  from  which  Townsend, 
some  years  before,  secured  four  skulls  of  a  Fur 
Seal  of  Antarctic  type,  named  (by  Dr.  Merriam) 
Arctocephalus  townsendi.  Guadalupe,  we  knew,  had 
been  freely  raided  from  Ensefiada  and  San  Diego, 
but  it  was  hoped  that  some  animals  might  still  exist 
there.  A  steamer  of  the  Coast  and  Geodetic  Survey 
had  accordingly  been  detailed  for  an  investigation 
conducted  by  Professors  Thoburn  and  Green.  A  Fur  Seals 
thorough  search  by  the  members  of  this  expedition  f*tinct  °n 

..      ,      to,  .  r     .  •    11  i        Guadalupe 

disclosed    many   items   of    interest,    especially   the  island 
spread  of  a  flock  of  goats  introduced  at  some  time 
or  other,  but  no  traces  of  Fur  Seal  were  found,  and 
townsendi  must  therefore  be  regarded  as  extinct. 


C6oi 


The  Days  of  a  Man  1:1897 


rbf  In  December,  the  Joint  Diplomatic  Commission 

diplomatic  provjde(i  for  a  year  before  and  composed  of  British, 

commis-        *L          .  J  i      A  • 

sion  Russian,  Japanese,  and  American  representatives, 
convened  at  Washington.  Great  Britain's  dele- 
gates were  Thompson  and  Macoun,  though  Sir 
Wilfrid  Laurier,  premier  of  Canada,  and  Sir  Louis 
Davies,  Solicitor  General,  had  come  from  Ottawa  to 
assist  as  advisers.  The  Japanese  delegation  was 
headed  by  Dr.  Kakichi  Mitsukuri,  a  distinguished 
scholar  holding  degrees  from  both  Yale  and  Johns 
Hopkins,  then  dean  of  the  College  of  Science  in  the 
Imperial  University  of  Tokyo.  Associated  with  him 
was  Shiro  Fujita  of  the  Japanese  Department  of 
Agriculture.  Russia  was  represented  by  two  men 
from  her  local  embassy  —  Messrs.  Pierre  Botkin 
and  Gregoire  de  Wollant;  their  role,  however,  was 
mainly  to  agree  with  us,  Russian  interests  being 
identical  with  those  of  the  United  States,  entrusted 
(as  I  have  said)  to  Foster,  Hamlin,  and  myself. 

With  the  British  members  we  had  frequent  con- 
ferences, and  with  the  Japanese  group  as  well. 
But  for  some  reason,  obscure  at  the  time,  in  spite 
of  the  fact  that  most  of  us  lived  at  the  Shoreham, 
we  could  never  bring  about  a  joint  meeting  of  the 
British  delegation  and  the  other  two,  as  on  the  days 
set  for  such  a  conference  Macoun  always  happened 
to  be  out  of  town. 

Finding  it  then  impossible  to  arrange  for  a  gen- 
eral treaty  involving  the  four  nations,  the  American 
commission  secured  —  and  without  difficulty  —  the 
signatures  of  Japan  and  Russia  to  a  special  treaty 
which,  when  accepted  by  Great  Britain  also,  would 

£602] 


189/3    Attempts  to  Abolish  Pelagic  Sealing 

abolish  pelagic  sealing  and  thus  preserve  the  Fur 
Seal  herds.  British  assent,  however,  though  never  British 
refused,  was  never  given  —  the  reason  assigned  for  ™luctance 
delay  being  that  protection  had  become  relatively 
unimportant  because  the  depletion  of  the  herd  had 
rendered  land-killing  and  sea-killing  alike  unprofit- 
able. At  the  time,  that  statement  was  practically 
true,  —  as  we  all  agreed,  —  but  very  soon  a  general 
rise  in  prices  due  in  part  to  scarcity  of  furs,  in  part 
to  world-wide  causes,  made  sealing  again  remu- 
nerative, as  I  have  already  explained.  Moreover, 
nothing  short  of  adequate  protection  would  ever 
restore  the  herd;  and  now,  we  urged,  was  the  time 
to  give  it. 

Gradually,  however,  it  became  evident  that  Great 
Britain  was  only  a  nominal  agent,  always  awaiting 
Canada's  initiative  in  the  affair;  and  Canada  her- 
self would  do  nothing  unless  and  until  her  joint  in- 
terest with  the  United  States  should  be  recognized. 
As  to  this  we  Americans  hesitated,  our  Govern-  Our  pre- 
ment  being  still  unwilling  to  admit  that  by  the  ******* 
Paris  Award  the  United  States  had  lost  all  legal 
claim  to  ownership  of  the  Pribilof  herd,  although 
necessarily  held  responsible  for  its  protection  on 
land. 

Our  only  possible  appeal,  therefore,  was  in  be- 
half of  the  animals,  threatened  with  extinction  be- 
cause no  nation  legally  owned  them,  while  the  con- 
ditions positively  demanded  that  some  one  country 
be  at  all  times  charged  with  their  defense  both  on 
land  and  sea.  The  conviction  thus  grew  on  me  that 
the  sole  way  out  was  to  admit  Canada  to  some  kind 
of  partnership,  an  arrangement  which  I  accordingly 
urged  more  than  once.  This  could  be  brought  about 

C  603  n 


The  Days  of  a  Man  [1897 

A  way  out  in  either  one  of  two  ways :  (a)  by  the  cession  to 
Canada  of  St.  George,  the  smaller  of  the  two  Pri- 
bilofs,  or  (b)  by  the  assignment  to  her  of  a  definite 
percentage  of  the  yearly  catch. 

To  the  first  proposition  it  was  objected,  and  with 
probable  truth,  that  "America  would  never  consent 
to  haul  down  the  flag  before  the  British  Lion  any- 
where." Against  the  second  some  argued  that 
sharing  of  proceeds  would  be  interpreted  as  "pay- 
ment of  tribute  to  Britain,"  which  again  our  people 
would  repudiate. 

Fresh  com-  Before  any  final  decision  had  been  reached,  a  new 
-plications  an(j  most  alarming  element  was  injected  into  the 
controversy.  For  some  years  past,  Japanese 
schooners  had  harassed  the  Russian  herd  in  its 
winter  migration  off  the  east  coast  of  Japan.  Later, 
and  aided  by  government  subsidies,  they  invaded 
Bering  Sea  —  first  attacking  the  Commander  herds 
in  the  open  ocean,  afterward  crossing  to  the  Pribilof 
feeding-grounds.  Moreover,  as  Japan  had  had  no 
part  in  the  Paris  Tribunal  or  its  Award,  her  sealers 
now  began  to  disregard  the  sixty-mile  limit  and  the 
closed  seasons  respected  by  the  Canadians.  They 
next  ignored  even  the  three-mile  limit  provided  in 
general  international  law,  hovering  close  about  the 
islands,  and  especially  around  the  great  Vostochni 
Rookery.  Finally,  in  utter  defiance  of  decency  as 
wejj  a§  Of  jaw>  they  jancjeci  on  Vostochni  and  be- 
gan killing  right  and  left  within  the  harems  —  an 
insolent  move  which  resulted  in  a  sort  of  desultory 
fight  between  them  and  the  Aleuts  led  by  Walter 
I.  Lembkey,  the  courageous  and  efficient  chief 
agent. 

Such  wanton  invasion  of  American  territory  was 
£604] 


1898]       The  Fur  Seal  Saved  at  Last 

tantamount  to  an  act  of  war,  and  the  subsidy  given 
by  the  Japanese  Government  an  unfriendly  act 
pardonable  only  on  the  ground  of  ignorance.  The 
whole  affair,  therefore,  tended  to  bring  the  long- 
drawn-out  controversy  to  a  head,  for  it  put  Canada 
as  well  as  the  United  States  on  the  defensive,  and 
ultimately  led  to  the  admirable  protective  treaty 
signed  by  all  four  nations  on  December  15,  1911, 
with  which  I  shall  shortly  deal. 

It  was  early  in  1898,  during  the  joint  conference, 
that  I  first  met  Laurier.    A  man  of  most  charming  Sir  Wilfrid 
address,  lovable  character,  and  keen  mind,  a  very  Launef 
able  and  interesting  personality,  in  face  and  figure 
he  seemed  a  child  of  fortune ;  or  to  put  it  somewhat 
differently,  he  looked  like  a  particularly  handsome, 
amiable  French  priest.    In  his  public  career  he  showed 
both  courage  and  firmness,  and  after  the  political 
reaction  of  some  years  later,  held  his  own  as  pro- 
gressive leader  of  the  Canadian  Liberals. 

My  respect  for  Mitsukuri  grew  with  every  day,  Kakichi 
as  I  found  him  always  just,  thoughtful,  and  un-  Mitsuku" 

.      ,.        ,  J    .  J  •         •/•  and  bis 

prejudiced;  moreover,  in  our  scientific  tastes  we  strange 
had  much  in  common.  As  a  special  offering  he  had  °ff*rins 
brought  me  a  young  specimen  of  the  teguzame  or 
goblin  shark,  a  most  extraordinary  and  fantastic 
fish  with  a  long,  flat  blade  at  the  end  of  the  snout 
like  that  of  the  Mississippi  River  paddlefish  — 
Polyodon  —  but  wholly  different  from  any  other 
living  shark.  It  proved  of  great  interest  to  pale- 
ontologists as  it  belongs  to  a  type  —  Scapano- 
rhynchus  —  supposed  to  have  become  extinct  with 
the  Eocene,  and  to  it  I  gave  the  generic  name  of 
Mitsukurina. 

1:605  3 


The  Days  of  a  Man  £1898 

Foster  was  at  that  time  a  leading  advocate  of 
international  arbitration.    On  the  day  following  our 
last  session  he  convened  a  public  meeting  in  the  in- 
terest  of  that  cause.     I  sympathized  fully  with  his 
calls  on      views  but  I  was  nevertheless  somewhat  taken  aback 

me  for  a  > 

speech  when  he  called  on  me  without  previous  warning, 
and  as  the  first  speaker.  However,  I  touched  on 
the  matter  that  immediately  came  to  my  mind  — 
the  need  of  surrounding  an  arbitral  tribunal  with  all 
the  safeguards  found  necessary  in  the  highest  courts 
of  a  nation.  Cases  under  adjudication,  for  example, 
must  be  "agreed  cases,"  —  that  is,  with  the  pertinent 
facts  already  admitted  by  both  contestants,  —  or 
else  the  fullest  precautions  against  perjury  should 
be  provided.  Even  at  the  Paris  Tribunal  perjured 
affidavits  were  presented;  and  Lord  Russell,  the 
British  chief  counsel,  did  not  scruple  to  interrupt 
his  final  plea  by  the  introduction  of  new  evidence 
—  a  procedure  contrary  to  court  practice.  In  con- 
clusion I  urged  that  the  proposed  International 
Tribunal  be  made  the  court  of  highest  appeal, 
^elevated  above  all  suspicion  of  intrigue  or  favoritism. 
/  That  informal  talk  was  the  first  of  the  many  ad- 
^Ndresses  I  have  given  in  behalf  of  arbitration,  a 
society  of  nations,  and  the  abolition  of  military 
|  force  as  an  argument  in  economics  or  politics. 


In  the  fall  of  this  year  the  Government  completed 
its  publication  of  the  four  large  volumes  of  the  re- 
port by  myself  and  associates  on  the  Fur  Seal, — 
its  habits,  history,  and  political  relations,  —  with 


1898]  The  Final  Treaty 

special  monographs  on  the  animals  and  plants  of  Fur  Seal 
the  Pribilof  and  Commander  islands.  The  American  re^ort 
commission,  as  such,  was  now  dissolved,  further  dis- 
cussion being  turned  over  to  the  Department  of 
State  under  (successively)  Hay,  Root,  and  Knox. 
Meanwhile  Charles  Nagel,  the  efficient  Secretary  of 
Commerce  under  Mr.  Taft,  organized  a  Fur  Seal 
Advisory  Board  serving  without  pay  and  composed 
of  all  the  scientific  experts  who  had  ever  been  sent 
to  the  Pribilofs,  an  arrangement  which  lasted 
through  the  Roosevelt  and  Taft  administrations. 

The  final  treaty,  that  of  1911  (in  which  I  had  no  Treaty  of 
direct  part),  provided,  in  brief,  that  up  to  1926  the  I911 
United  States  and  Russia,  in  return  for  the  abandon- 
ment of  pelagic  sealing  by  Canada  and  Japan, 
should  each  pay  yearly  to  each  of  the  just-named 
countries,  15  per  cent  of  their  receipts  from  land- 
killing.  For  the  protection  of  Robben  Island,  al- 
ready ceded  by  Russia  to  Japan,  the  latter  was  to 
yield  to  the  former  10  per  cent  of  her  receipts  — 
the  same  also  to  Canada  and  the  United  States. 
The  provisions  of  this  treaty  were,  I  believe,  equi- 
table, everything  considered.  Through  their  opera- 
tion the  herd  was  preserved  safe  for  fifteen  years 
at  least,  and  I  trust  permanently  —  a  renewal 
in  1927  being  to  the  interest  of  all  legitimately 
concerned. 

Credit  for  the  negotiation  of  the  treaty  should  be  Credit 
given  primarily  to  Secretary  Nagel,  who  was,  how-  ^£  {s 
ever,  ably  assisted  by  Evermann  and  Clark,  and  in  due 
some  degree  by  all  the  members  of  the  scientific 
committees  of  investigation.     In  a  recent  personal 
letter  to  me,  Mr.  Nagel  himself  lays  special  stress 
on  the  help  received  from  Mr.  Knox,  then  Secretary 


The  Days  of  a  Man  £1898 

of  State,  citing  this  as  an  example  of  mutual  aid 
between  governmental  departments. 

Having  signed,  Japan  and  Canada  at  once  re- 
called their  sealers  and  paid  them  for  their  boats.1 
(I  must  here  explain  that  Canada  had  now  acquired 
the  right  to  make  treaties  on  her  own  account,  free 
from  Great  Britain's  nominal  control.)  As  a  result 
of  protection,  the  number  of  breeding  females  — 
which  by  1910  had  dropped  to  43,399  —  rose  in 
1916  to  116,977,  in  1918  to  157,172,  and  in  1920  to 
167,527.  With  continued  care  there  is  no  evident 
limit  to  the  possible  increase,  food  and  rookery- 
space  being  of  the  amplest. 
Efforts  to  But  certain  interests  opposed  to  settlement  by  no 
means  Save  UP  tne  fignt-  Through  their  efforts  an 
order  was  promulgated,  limiting  for  five  years  the 
land-killing  of  superfluous  males  to  about  4000  — 
the  bare  number  necessary  to  provide  the  Aleuts 
with  food  — although  upward  of  15,000  could  have 
been  safely  or  even  advantageously  taken.  It  was 
further  required  that  at  least  5000  three-year-old 
males  should  each  year  be  definitely  reserved.  This 
limitation  was  of  course  absurd  in  connection  with 
the  other  provisions,  for  some  thousands  would  in- 
evitably escape,  and  no  practicable  degree  of  killing 
could  endanger  the  necessary  stock  of  males,  as  had 
been  already  demonstrated  on  the  Russian  islands, 
where  the  killing  was  continuously  far  more  drastic 
than  any  ever  attempted  on  the  Pribilofs.2 

One  unacknowledged  motive  behind  reduction  in 

1  A  procedure  costing  the  Japanese  Government  about  $252,000. 

2  It  should  be  added  that  in  1918  the  yearly  quota  of  killables  was  raised 
to  35,000,  and  orders  were  issued  to  kill  7000  of  the  idle  bulls  which  had  car- 
ried on  constant  warfare  with  their  more  fortunate  brothers. 

c  608  n 


18983      A  Campaign  of  Obstruction 

land-killing  seems  to  have  been  to  induce  Canada 
and  Japan  to  abrogate  the  treaty  on  the  ground  that 
by  the  new  limitation  they  would  each  receive  only 
about  $20,000  a  year  instead  of  the  $200,000  (more 
or  less)  which  they  had  reason  to  expect  when 
negotiations  were  concluded.  It  will,  of  course,  be  Menace  of 
understood  that  the  treaty  once  dishonored,  pelagic  unec£ec^ed 
sealing  would  then  have  gone  on  unchecked,  and  with  siding 
increasingly  disastrous  results.  But  in  the  confu- 
sion of  world  war,  the  whole  matter  seemed  to  drop 
out  of  notice;  and  the  protests  naturally  to  be  ex- 
pected from  the  two  countries  never  materialized, 
so  far  as  I  know.  Normal  killing  having  now  been 
resumed,  the  annual  receipts  of  Canada  and  Japan 
are  individually  (1920)  not  far  from  $500,000. 
That  enormous  increase  is,  however,  largely  due 
to  the  rise  in  fur  values,  resulting  from  an  inordinate 
demand  for  luxuries  and  the  thinning-out  or  ex- 
tirpation of  other  fur-bearing  animals.1 

The  campaign  of  obstruction  took  on  two  aspects  Unsound 
—  one   apparently   humanitarian,    condemning   the  reasontns 
slaughter  of  wild  creatures;   the  other  the  old  base- 
less clamor  that  reduction  of  the  breeding  herd  was 
largely  due  to  land-killing  of  males.2    Nagel  took  no 

1  In  1918,  34,890  salted  undressed  skins  which  had  been  taken  in  1917  were 
sold  at  auction  for  $46.34  apiece;  in  1919,  27,821  skins  brought  $78.38  apiece; 
at  St.  Louis,  February  2,  1920,  9100  skins  averaged  $140.98  each,  or  a  total  of 
$1,182,905.    By  1925  it  may  be  possible  to  obtain,  and  without  injury  to  the 
herd,  100,000  skins  yearly,  as  in  the  early  '8o's;  these  should  be  worth  between 
$5,000,000,  and  $10,000,000. 

2  More  discreditable,  because  underhanded,  were  the  attacks  by  a  well- 
known  lobbyist  on  Clark,  who,  as  secretary  of  the  two  commissions  and  later 
scientific  expert  in  charge  of  the  herd,  had  become  the  unquestioned  authority  on 
the  Fur  Seal.    These  slurs  took  the  form  of  abusive  letters  over  assumed  names, 
addressed  to  the  press  and  to  various  individuals  with  whom  Clark  was  connected, 
the  trustees  of  Stanford  University,  and  even  "Greek-letter"  groups  among  the 
students.    Of  course  no  one  familiar  with  his  sterling  integrity  paid  the  slightest 
attention  to  the  slanders,  although  he  himself  was  naturally  pained  by  them. 

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The  Days  of  a  Man  £1898 

stock  in  these  arguments,  but  his  successor,  William 
C.  Redfield,  seemed  to  accept  them  uncritically. 
And  yet  every  scientific  expert  who  studied  the 
situation,  steadfast  lovers  of  wild  life  though  all 
were,  persistently  urged  the  killing  of  superfluous 
males. 

Killing  of       For  this  there  were  two  reasons  already  amply 
superflu-     implie(l.    The  first  was  that  if  the  herds    ceased  to 

ous  males         •    i  i  •  •  1111 

a  necessity  yield  economic  return,  no  nation  would  undertake 
the  cost  of  guarding  them,  and  without  protection 
both  on  land  and  sea  the  most  interesting  species 
of  marine  animals  would  soon  be  exterminated  by 
illicit  raids.  Unfortunately,  most  of  the  herds  of 
the  related  Antarctic  genus  —  Arctocepbalus  —  have 
suffered  that  fate  as  well  as  the  small  but  interest- 
ing herd  of  Guadalupe  Island,  previously  mentioned, 
and  the  three  small  herds  of  the  Kuriles.  A  second 
reason,  also  important,  was  that  many  females  and 
young  are  killed  or  injured  in  the  constant  forays 
of  idle  bulls.  For,  as  I  have  said,  the  sexes  being 
numerically  equal,  males  are  vastly  in  excess  of  the 
needs  of  the  polygamous  herd.1 

1  Raima's  record  for  1916  shows  that  2482  pups,  79  cows,  and  12  bulls  were 
killed  in  the  raids  of  that  year.  Casualties  in  1912  (before  the  number  of  bulls 
had  unduly  increased)  amounted  to  1060  pups,  27  cows,  and  3  bulls.  As  to  this 
Clark  observes: 

"The  deaths  in  1912  were  what  might  be  considered  normal  and  inevitable. 
In  that  season  there  were  only  113  idle  bulls,  and  the  fighting  was  a  negligible 
factor.  The  deaths  occurred  as  a  result  of  accidents  inherent  in  the  crowded 
condition  of  harem  life.  In  1916,  however,  we  find  the  deaths  among  bulls 
quadrupled;  among  cows,  almost  trebled,  and  among  pups  increased  134  per 
cent.  Moreover,  this  is  with  only  between  two  and  three  thousand  idle  bulls. 
What  will  be  the  result  when  the  60,000  to  70,000  idle  bulls  begin  six  to  eight 
years  hence  to  bring  their  pressure  to  bear  upon  the  breeding  grounds?  .  .  . 

"The  bull  fur  seal  is  an  animal  of  about  500  pounds'  weight;  his  mates  are 
animals  of  80  pounds'  weight;  the  pup  at  birth  is  a  weak  thing  of  12  pounds. 
The  harem  life  of  the  seals  is  crowded  at  best  and  subject  to  commotion.  The 
mother  seal  takes  no  thought  of  the  time  and  place  of  labor.  Newly  born  pups 
are  trampled  and  smothered  under  the  best  of  circumstances.  Anything  which 

C  610:1 


1898]  A  New  Investigation 

The  incoming  Secretary,  ignoring  previous  re- 
ports, now  sent  up  another  scientific  commission, 
selected  by  the  National  Academy  of  Sciences,  the 
Secretary  of  Agriculture,  and  the  Secretary  of  the 
Smithsonian  Institution.  These  gentlemen  were 
instructed  to  investigate  the  whole  matter  anew, 
avoiding  the  bias  of  all  earlier  opinions.  The  men 
chosen  —  Professor  George  H.  Parker  of  Harvard, 
Wilfred  H.  Osgood  of  the  Field  Museum,  a  former 
student  of  mine,  and  Edward  A.  Preble  of  the  De- 
partment of  Agriculture  —  were  wholly  competent. 
Their  carefully  prepared  report  agreed  in  every  re- 
spect with  the  findings  of  previous  commissions,  but 
Redfield  paid  no  attention  to  its  recommendations. 

I  need  go  no  further  into  these  details.     They  Value  of 
afford  but  one  more  example  of  the  failure  of  a  e*pert,  , 

i  r      nr    •    i  11  r  knowledge 

certain  class  of  officials  to  take  advantage  ot  expert 
knowledge.  The  United  States  employs  many 
scientific  men  of  the  first  rank,  always  ready  to  serve 
the  public  interest.  And  to  repeat  explicitly:  from 
1891  to  the  present  time,  more  than  a  dozen  natu- 
ralists of  highest  standing,  —  Merriam,  Menden- 
hall,  Evermann,  True,  Townsend,  Stejneger,  Lucas, 
Clark,  Hahn,  Parker,  Osgood,  Preble,  Hanna,  and 
Heath,  —  besides  several  competent  younger  men, 
• — Greeley,  Snodgrass,  Kincaid,  Adams,  Farmer, 
Warren,  and  Chichester,  —  sent  at  intervals  to  the 

creates  turmoil  and  fighting  in  the  vicinity  of  the  breeding  grounds  is  necessarily 
fraught  with  danger  to  the  young.  Fighting  among  the  bulls  arises  from  at- 
tempts by  idle  bulls  to  steal  cows  from  their  more  successful  neighbors.  In  these 
contests'  cows  are  torn  and  injured  and  pups  trampled.  .  .  ." 

The  fur-seal  herds  have  abundant  room  for  extension,  and  the  food  supply 
is  ample.  The  only  known  natural  checks  to  the  indefinite  extension  of  the 
herds  lie  in  the  fighting  of  the  males,  the  possible  spread  of  the  hookworm  in 
sandy  areas,  and  in  occasional  attacks  of  the  Great  Killer  or  Orca,  a  large, 
swift,  and  voracious  kind  of  porpoise. 

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The  Days  of  a  Man  £1898 

Pribilofs  for  purposes  of  investigation,  have  been  in 
full  agreement  on  every  matter  of  importance. 

For  the  last  eight  or  ten  years  the  present  Com- 
obser-  missioner  of  Fisheries,  Dr.  Hugh  M.  Smith,  has 
found  it  possible  to  place  the  herd  for  scientific 
observation  under  the  successive  control  of  Clark, 
Harold  Heath  (a  Stanford  professor  of  Zoology),  and 
Hanna.1 

1  As  these  pages  are  sent  to  the  press,  I  have  received  from  Mr.  Hanna  the 
following: 

RECAPITULATION  OF  ALASKA  FUR-SEAL  CENSUS  IN  1920 

Pups 167,527 

Cows 167,527 

Harem  Bulls 4,066 

Idle  Bulls 1,161 

Yearling  Females 51,081 

Yearling  Males 51,074 

2-year-old  Females 39,480 

2-year-old  Males 38,1 12 

3-year-old  Males 12,622 

4-year-old  Males 5,850 

5-year-old  Males 4,554 

6-year-old  Males 2,510 

7-year-old  Males  and  over  (surplus  bulls) 3,33° 

Total 548,894 

Killables,  taken  for  skins 28,418 


CHAPTER  TWENTY-FOUR 


EARLY  in  1898  agitation  for  war  with  Spain,  which 
had  been  simmering  for  some  time,  began  to  grow 
insistent.  In  New  York  a  group  of  wealthy  men  were 
said  to  be  financing  the  so-called  "Cuban  Junta" 
and  promoting  filibuster  expeditions  and  interior 
disturbances  in  Cuba.  Thus  the  local  situation,  Atrocities 
already  wretched  at  the  best,  was  further  aggravated  in  Cuba 
from  the  outside.  Meanwhile  the  impotent  Spanish 
Government  had  left  to  General  Weyler,  a  coarse 
and  brutal  militarist  of  a  type  now  more  familiar, 
the  responsibility  of  putting  down  insurrections. 
Weyler's  force  being  inadequate,  he  adopted  the 
reconcentrado  plan  of  dealing  with  the  people;  that 
is,  gathering  them  in  great  camps  necessarily  un- 
sanitary and  so  inimical  to  health  —  upon  which 
our  "yellow  press"  made  the  most  of  atrocities, 
actual  and  invented,  to  inflame  the  American 
people. 

At  this  juncture,  General  Stewart  L.  Woodford  A  special 
went  to  Spain  as  special  envoy  instructed  to  secure  envoy 
a  rational  settlement  of  the  Cuban  situation.  This 
he  succeeded  in  arranging,  as  I  shall  later  explain, 
in  spite  of  the  fact  that  Spain  was  well  aware  of 
the  existence  in  America  of  strong  financial  interests 
working  for  the  annexation  of  the  island.  Indeed, 
a  well-known  capitalist  of  New  York  once  told  me 
boastingly  that  he  brought  on  the  Spanish-American 
War  by  personally  furnishing  the  Junta  with  money 
for  the  insurgents! 

C6i3  3 


The  Days  of  a  Man  £1898 

Sinking  At  a  critical  moment,  the  sinking  in  Havana 
?/'**.  „  harbor  of  the  Maine,  United  States  man-of-war, 
brought  matters  to  a  head ;  yet  I  doubt  if  any  well- 
informed  person  ever  believed  the  Spanish  Govern- 
ment to  be  party  to  such  a  suicidal  act.  Moreover, 
the  public  has  never  known  whether  the  explosion 
was  due  to  internal  or  external  causes.  But  in  any 
case  it  gave  great  impetus  to  the  war  spirit  in  the 
United  States,  although  the  body  of  our  people  still 
hoped  for  peace. 

Meanwhile  Woodford  had  negotiated  a  treaty 
whereby  Cuba  was  to  receive  autonomy  much  like 
that  of  Canada,  and  all  outstanding  differences,  in- 
cluding the  affair  of  the  Maine,  were  to  be  settled 
by  arbitration.  Sensational  papers,  however,  still 
McKiniey's  called  loudly  for  war.  McKinley  was  evidently 
advisers  reluctant  to  yield,  but  his  weakness  as  well  as  his 
strength  lay  in  "holding  an  ear  to  the  ground"  — 
in  other  words,  in  leading  wherever  the  people 
seemed  willing  to  push  him.  And  as  I  was  told, 
three  Republican  senators,  Hanna,  Elkins,  and 
one  other,  went  to  him,  saying  (in  substance): 

The  people  demand  war,  they  are  ready  for  it  and  expect 
it.  If  the  Republican  Party  does  not  deliver  it,  the  coming 
election  will  certainly  put  Bryan  in  the  presidential  chair,  a 
result  which  will  mean  national  disaster  through  the  remone- 
tization  of  silver,  cutting  the  value  of  every  security  in  two  by 
substituting  a  silver  for  a  gold  basis. 

These  plausible  considerations  turned  the  scale, 
and  in  his  message  to  Congress  the  President  prac- 
tically left  that  body  no  alternative  except  to  de- 
clare war.  As  a  matter  of  historical  fact,  when  an 
executive  pronounces  for  it,  the  legislative  body 

£614:1 


1898]  War  with  Spain 

always  follows  —  if  for  no  other  reason,  to  present 
a  solid  front. 

Shortly  after  his  return  from  Spain  I  met  General 
Woodford  at  the  Hotel  Willard  in  Washington. 
We  had  been  fellow  trustees  at  Cornell,  and  he  spoke 
his  mind  freely;  he  was  extremely  distressed  and 
humiliated.  Successful  in  the  mission  assigned  him, 
he  had  opened  the  way  to  an  honorable  settlement 
which  would  have  relieved  Cuba  and  averted  war. 
Yet  at  the  critical  moment  his  country  discredited  Woodford 
him,  and  the  Spanish  believed  he  had  been  merely 
tricking  them  with  suggestions  of  friendship  and 
peace.1 

To  the  American  people  at  large  our  conflict  with 
Spain  seemed  wholly  altruistic.  It  was,  nevertheless, 
foisted  on  us  by  commercial  and  political  interests 

1  Some  years  later  I  published  a  statement  of  this  master  in  the  New  York 
Times.    One  of  its  readers  having  denied  the  accuracy  of  my  account  in  a  letter 
to  the  paper,  his  communication  drew  forth  the  following,  dated  New  York 
City,  April  17,  1915,  from  a  former  member  of  the  State  Department: 
"To  the  Editor  of  the  New  York  Times: 

"  David  Starr  Jordan  and  Richard  Barry  are  right  and  Herbert  W.  Bowen 
is  wrong  in  regard  to  the  statement  of  the  former  that  General  Woodford  be- 
lieved that  the  war  with  Spain  could  have  been  averted.  At  a  dinner  given  in 
honor  of  Leo  Tolstoy's  seventieth  birthday  in  this  city  about  Sept.  i,  1898, 
General  Woodford  was  present,  and  spoke  briefly  on  the  conditions  that  had 
led  up  to  the  war  with  Spain.  A  report  of  his  remarks  was  published  in  the 
Critic,  and  while  I  have  not  a  copy  of  that  publication,  with  the  account  of  the 
Tolstoy  dinner,  at  hand,  I  recall  distinctly  that  General  Woodford  stated  that 
the  Spanish  Government  did  not  want  war,  and  that  in  his  opinion  the  war 
could  have  been  avoided. 

"Mr.  Bowen's  letter  reminds  me  that  it  is  just  twenty-two  years  ago  this 
month  that,  while  acting  as  editor  (or  reviser)  of  the  United  States  Consular 
Reports,  I  had  occasion  to  put  in  shape  a  thrilling  monograph  on  'Poultry 
Raising  in  Spain'  by  the  United  States  consul  at  Barcelona,  in  which  it  was 
stated  that  hens  in  that  consular  district  were  frequently  attacked  by  some 
obscure  disease,  which,  said  the  report,  was  'followed  by  their  subsequent 
decease.' 

"Mr.  Bowen's  knowledge  of  hen  afflictions  is  evidently  more  exact  than  are 
his  recollections  of  General  Woodford's  views  regarding  the  war  with  Spain. 

(signed)  "WHIDDEN  GRAHAM" 


The  Days  of  a  Man  £1898 

at  a  sacrifice  of  national  honor  humiliating  to  every 
one  acquainted  with  the  facts.  Documents  dealing 
with  the  origin  of  the  war  were  afterward  printed, 
but  too  late  to  have  any  current  relevance,  for  the 
affair  being  over,  very  few  have  gone  to  the  trouble 
of  reading  them. 

at  The  battle  of  Manila  Bay  took  place  on  May  i, 
Manila  jg^  an(j  everywhere  the  press  acclaimed  Dewey's 
great  victory,  placing  it  in  the  front  rank  of  notable 
achievements.  On  the  evening  of  May  2,  I  was  to 
speak  in  Metropolitan  Hall,  San  Francisco,  on  an 
educational  subject.  Asking  permission  of  the 
audience  to  discuss  instead  the  risks  which  might 
follow  our  success,  I  took  as  the  title  of  my  address 
Kipling's  phrase,  "Lest  We  Forget." 

"Lest  we  There  was  great  danger,  I  said,  that  in  easy  victory  we  might 
forget!"  lose  sight  of  the  basal  principles  of  this  Republic,  a  cooperative 
association  in  which  "all  just  powers  are  derived  from  the 
consent  of  the  governed."  The  temptation  would  then  be  to 
hold  Cuba  and  the  Philippines,  not  as  self-governing  parts  of 
the  nation  but  as  districts  to  be  dominated  and  exploited. 
Such  a  policy  would  be  imperialistic,  and  to  carry  it  out  our 
democracy  must  necessarily  depart  from  its  best  principles  and 
traditions.  If  we  ruled  the  Philippines,  to  that  same  degree 
the  Philippines  would  rule  us;  if  we  held  them  as  conquered 
territory,  we  should  be  committing  the  folly  and  crime  which 
has  always  lain  at  the  foundation  of  empire,  and  which  is  the 
cause  of  its  ultimate  disintegration  everywhere.1 

The  Spanish  War  actually  under  way,  I  refrained 
from  public  criticism,  as  I  believe  the  time  to  oppose 
what  seems  a  wrong  policy  is  before  its  adoption, 
and  furthermore,  I  would  put  no  obstacle  in  the  way 
of  men  engaged  in  loyal  service.  After  the  treaty 

1  See  Appendix  D  for  extracts  from  this  address.  There  also  will  be  found 
the  manifesto  of  the  Anti-Imperialists,  of  which  honorable  group  I  was  a  member. 


lsm 


1898]  /  Become  a  Pacifist 

with  Spain,  however,  I  spoke  several  times,  and  oc-  Anti- 
casionally  wrote  articles  arguing  that  we  should  let 

i         m   •!•        •  &          &  B 

the  Philippines  go  unless  we  meant  to  incorporate 
them  into  the  United  States,  with  ultimately  the 
same  rights  as  those  possessed  by  the  other  members. 
I  also  ventured  to  say  that  if  in  the  end  our  country 
occupied  an  honorable  position  it  would  be  because 
leaders  of  a  different  type  had  gained  control  — 
which  indeed  proved  to  be  the  case. 

The   conclusion  of  the   Spanish  War  left   Cuba  See  Mark 
independent    although   under   our   direction,   while  «™ain: 
on  the  other  hand  entire  sovereignty  of  the  Philip-  per°son 
pines  was  ceded  to  the  United  States,  in  considera-  ®***&in» 
tion  of  which  transfer  we  paid  Spain  $20,000,000. 
But  the  wishes  of  the  Filipino  people  having  been 
in  no  way  regarded,   they  made   a   strenuous   re- 
sistance under  Aguinaldo,  their  recognized*  leader; 
and  it  was  only  after  a  long  and  bloody  struggle 
that  they  were  compelled  to  submit. 

American  control  being  then  fully  established, 
every  effort  was  made  for  the  betterment  of  con- 
ditions. To  this  end  the  United  States  has  ex- 
pended its  energies  in  sanitation,  education,  agri- 
culture, and  scientific  investigation,  receiving  prac- 
tically no  financial  returns.  No  colonial  dependency 
of  any  other  nation  has  ever  been  treated  with  the 
intelligence  and  devotion  characterizing  our  civilian 
staff  in  the  Philippines.  Meanwhile  the  people 
themselves  have  been  granted  an  increasingly  large 
share  in  the  local  government/  It  therefore  seems 
not  impossible  that  in  a  relatively  near  future  the 
islands  may  form  a  self-governing  state  within  the 
American  republic  or,  if  they  prefer,  a  self-determin- 
ing nation  outside. 


The  Days  of  a  Man  £1898 

Democracy       Nevertheless,   the   dangers   indicated   in  my  ad- 
turned  im-  dress  after  Dcwcv's  victory  proved  to  be  very  real. 

penahst        ,_.  n         i    j         •   i  r        ti 

Ihe  country  was  Hooded  with  arguments  for  ex- 
pansion/' and  the  once-abhorred  word  "imperial- 
ism" was  received  with  great  enthusiasm  by  the 
press  and  a  majority  of  our  citizens  as  a  glorious 
slogan.  It  was  then  that  my  own  mind  began  to 
turn  more  directly  to  matters  of  government  — 
national,  international,  and  municipal.  My  con- 
ception of  democracy  had  always  implied  self-gov- 
ernment, but  more  and  more  I  now  came  to  realize 
the  truth  of  Lincoln's  words,  so  easily  forgotten 
under  political  temptation:  "No  people  is  good 
enough  to  govern  another  against  its  will."  x 
Eugenic  During  this  period,  also,  I  first  began  to  study 
studies  seriously  the  effect  of  war  on  the  human  breed, 
the  constant  elimination  of  the  strong  and  brave, 
as  well  as  of  the  bully  and  the  soldier  of  fortune, 
a  matter  only  briefly  indicated  by  Darwin  and 
Spencer,  although  the  actual  fact  of  the  reversal 
of  human  selection  through  militarism  and  war 
was  most  tersely  stated  by  the  former  in  1871  in 
"The  Descent  of  Man": 

Darwin  In  every  country  in  which  a  standing  army  is  kept  up,  the 

on  war        fairest  young  men  are  taken  to  the  conscription  camp  and 

selection       tnere  enlisted.  They  are  thus  exposed  to  early  death  during 

war  and  are  often  tempted  into  vice  and  are  prevented  from 

marrying  during  the  prime  of  life.   On  the  other  hand,  the  shorter 

and  feebler  men  with  poor  constitutions  are  left  at  home  and 

consequently  have  a  better  chance  of  marrying  and  propagating 

their  kind. 

1  "Imperial  Democracy,"  published  in  1899,  contains  six  of  my  addresses 
of  that  and  the  previous  year:  "Lest  We  Forget,"  "A  Blind  Man's  Holiday,^' 
"The  Captain  Sleeps,"  "Colonial  Lessons  of  Alaska,"  "A  Continuing  City," 
and  "The  Last  of  the  Puritans." 


1898]     Indictment  of  the  War  System 

In  more  recent  years,  amplifying  this  text,  I  "The 
have  made  it  the  basis  of  an  insistent  indictment  of 
the  War  System.  For  I  was  able  to  collect  much 
evidence  that  "the  man  who  is  left"  in  the  vicis- 
situdes of  history  stamps  his  qualities  on  the  future 
of  the  race,  and  that  the  only  source  of  racial  de- 
generation lies  in  reversed  selection,  the  weeding  out 
of  the  best.  On  this  topic  and  its  implications  I 
gave  numerous  lectures  in  America,  Europe,  and 
Japan. 

In  1902  I  wrote  out  the  substance  of  one  of  these 
addresses,  which  was  published  by  the  Beacon 
Press  in  Boston  as  "The  Blood  of  the  Nation." 
In  1906  I  prepared  a  more  lengthy  review  of  the 
same  subject  for  the  American  Philosophical  Society 
at  Philadelphia  under  the  title,  "The  Human  "The 
Harvest,"  l  suggested  by  Professor  John  R.  Seeley's 
statement  that  during  the  period  of  the  Antonines 
in  Rome  "the  human  harvest  was  bad."  By  this 
he  meant  that  though  there  were  males  enough  in 
Rome,  which  was  filling  up  like  an  overflowing  marsh, 
"vir  had  given  place  to  homo"  and  "the  Empire 
perished  for  want  of  men."  In  1915  a  still  more 
extended  treatise  on  the  same  subject,  in  which  I 
gathered  together  all  material  then  available,  was 
published  by  the  Beacon  Press  under  the  title,  "War  and 
"War  and  the  Breed."  2  the  Breed" 

1  Considerably  expanded  and  published  in  1907  in  book  form  with  the  same 
title,  and  dedicated  to  the  memory  of  my  brother.     See  Chapter  I,  page  9. 

2  Some  of  these  books  were  soon  printed  in  other  languages: 

"La  Guerre  et  la  Virilite"  and  "La  Moisson  bumaine"  translations  into 
French  by  Jacques  Dumas  of  "War  and  Manhood"  and  "The  Human  Harvest," 
published  in  Paris  —  a  copy  of  "La  Moisson  humaine"  having  been  given  to 
each  (then)  member  of  the  French  Senate  by  D'Estournelles  de  Constant,  who, 
like  Dumas,  will  appear  in  subsequent  pages; 

"La  Cosecha  bumana"  translation  into  Spanish  by  Dr.  Aurelio  M.  Espinosa 

r.6193 


The  Days  of  a  Man  £1898 

Mrs.  Incidentally  I  may  add  that  at  the  end  of  our  war 

Sta"f°rd     with  Spain,  Mrs.  Stanford,  influenced  no  doubt  bv 

ana  world    ,          v       i_        j»        i  •  *•          •  ••  •          i»r 

Peace  her  husband  s  abiding  interest  in  international  arbi- 
tration, asked  if  I  could  not  take  a  leadership  in 
some  great  reform  —  World  Peace,  for  example,  as 
I  had  often  spoken  in  its  behalf.  This  request  was 
of  course  neither  the  cause  nor  the  source  of  my 
work  for  international  conciliation,  but  I  mention 
it  to  show  the  attitude  of  both  founders  of  Stanford 
University  toward  the  greatest  of  all  social  reforms, 
the  one  indeed  on  which  all  others  wait!1 


TO  the  In  the  summer  of  1898  Mrs.  Jordan  and  I  had  a 

Southwest  Wonderfully  delightful  vacation,  one  part  of  which 
was  notable,  at  least  in  our  own  lives.  In  early 
June,  at  the  instance  of  Emory  E.  Smith  —  for  a 
time  a  teacher  in  Stanford  University  —  and  ac- 
companied by  him  and  several  other  congenial 
friends,  including  Dr.  Branner  and  Mr.  Charles  F. 
Lummis  of  Los  Angeles,  we  set  out  to  visit  the 
Grand  Canyon  of  the  Colorado.  Later,  at  Lummis' 
invitation,  a  few  of  us  extended  our  trip  to  the 

(of  Stanford  University)  of  "The  Human  Harvest,"  published  in  Madrid  as 
companion  volume  to  "El  Imperio  invisible,"  his  translation  of  my  "Unseen 
Empire";  and 

"  Kokumin  no  Kotto"  translation  into  Japanese  by  I.  Nakamura  (Stan- 
ford, '05)  of  "The  Blood  of  the  Nation,"  published  in  Tokyo. 

" Krieg  und  Mannheit"  — that  is,  "War  and  Manhood,"  —  my  address  (in 
German)  at  Berlin,  1910,  was  published  in  Vienna  by  Dr.  Alfred  H.  Fried, 
consistent  opponent  of  German  militarism,  of  whom  more  later,  for  free  dis- 
tribution in  Germany.  Its  keynote  may  be  found  in  Franklin's  epigram: 
"Wars  are  not  paid  for  in  war  time;  the  bill  comes  later."  See  Vol.  II, 
Chapter  xxxvi,  pages  299-300,  307-308,  etc. 

1  Mr.  Stanford's  attitude  has  already  been  made  clear;  see  Chapter  xvn, 
page  402,  and  Chapter  xx,  page  487. 

C  620  ] 


1898]  A  Unique  Character 

pueblo   of  Acoma 1   and   its   "  Enchanted   Mesa " 
in  New  Mexico. 

Lummis,  by  the  way,  although  Eastern-born  and 
Harvard-bred,  is  one  of  California's  unique  and 
original  characters.  Active  and  versatile,  Western 
to  the  core,  he  has  attempted  without  hesitation 
any  feat,  physical  or  mental,  which  touched  his 
fancy.  When  we  first  met  him  he  was  editing  The 
Land  of  Sunshine,  afterward  Out  West,  and  the  edi-  J*^*?* 
torial  section,  picturesquely  styled  "In  the  Lion's  Sunshine" 
Den,"  always  contained  vigorously  trenchant  criti- 
cism, occasionally  intolerant  but  generally  with  a 
fundamental  basis  of  justice.  In  Indian  and  Spanish- 
American  affairs,  on  which  he  has  long  been  an 
authority  by  virtue  of  study,  travel,  and  personal 
observation,  Lummis  is  profoundly  interested.  With 
him  and  his  talented  wife,2  Mrs.  Jordan  and  I  came 
to  have  most  friendly  relations.  The  best  test  of  that 
friendship,  he  claimed,  was  the  naming  after  me  of 
a  son  born  on  my  birthday  anniversary,  January  19, 
1900.  In  the  future  of  Jordan  Lummis,  now  a 
tall,  fair-haired  youth  of  much  promise  as  an  elec- 
trical engineer,  I  naturally  feel  a  distinct  interest. 
And  to  his  father  we  shall  always  be  especially  in- 
debted for  the  memorable  experience  soon  to  be 
related. 

From  Flagstaff,  then  the  usual  point  of  departure 
for   the   Canyon,   we   made   two   preliminary   side 
trips.     The   first   was   to   Walnut   Creek   Canyon, 
some  miles  to  the  south,  where  a  number  of  well- 
preserved  cliff-dwellings  are  wedged  under  an  over-  ciiff- 
hanging  rock.     The   second,  on   horseback,  led  to  dwellings 
the  top  of  one  of  the  San  Francisco  Peaks,  extinct 

1  Accented  on  the  initial  "a."          2  Now  Mrs.  Courtenay  De  Kalb. 

1621  3 


The  Days  of  a  Man  £1898 

volcanoes  of  very  ancient  date,  the  highest  reaching 
an  altitude  of  about  13,000  feet  and  famed  among 
botanists  for  its  strongly  marked  consecutive  zones 
of  vegetation.  Dr.  Branner  also  visited  (as  the  rest 
of  us  did  not)  three  recent  volcanic  craters  less  than 
a  thousand  years  old  at  the  most  and  very  interest- 
ing to  the  geologist.  These,  which  lie  forty  miles 
and  more  northeast  of  Flagstaff,  are  known  as 
O'Leary's  Peak,  Sunset  Peak,  and  Black  Crater. 
Bound  for  The  old  stage  drive  of  seventy  miles  from  Flag- 
tbe  Grand  stajj  to  Grand  View,  a  fine  point  several  miles  above 

Canyon  .  .  IIT»»IAI  r 

the  present  large  hotel  at  Bright  Angel,1  we  found 
extremely  interesting,  even  if  rather  fatiguing  be- 
cause of  the  heat.  The  way  lay  through  alternating 
stretches  of  open,  rocky  desert  and  the  noble  Coco- 
nino  forest  of  Yellow  Pine  —  latifolia  —  a  twin  to 
ponderosa,  the  Yellow  Pine  of  the  Sierra  Nevada. 
In  moist  glades  along  the  line  were  patches  of 
glistening  white  aspen,  their  leaves  a-tremble  with 
the  least  movement  of  air.  On  sunburnt  boulders, 
large  and  swift  bright-green,  chameleon-like  lizards 
—  Callisaurus  —  freely  disported  themselves.  One 
of  these  we  caught,  though  with  some  difficulty, 
and  took  home  for  leisurely  study.  For  the  same 
purpose  we  gathered  in  from  time  to  time  several 
samples  of  Horned  Toads  —  Phrynosoma  —  in  ex- 
quisite pastel  shades  of  rose,  lavender,  and  gray, 
perfectly  matching  the  rocks  over  which  they  crept. 
It  is  quite  impossible  (and  fortunately  quite  un- 
necessary) for  me  to  describe  the  stupendous  chasm 
of  the  Colorado  River.  Its  grandeur  and  beauty, 

1  In  his  famous  descent  of  the  Colorado  by  boat,  Major  J.  W.  Powell  found 
on  the  west  side  of  the  Canyon  a  muddy  stream  which  he  called  the  "  Dirty 
Devil."  Below,  from  the  opposite  bank,  comes  tumbling  down  the  clear  "  Bright 
Angel." 

C6223 


1898]     Grand  Canyon  of  the  Colorado 

its  weird  magnificence,  and  its  sublime  supremacy  the 
world  knows.  But  it  impressed  me  also  through  its 
infinite  laziness.  For  while  the  rest  of  the  earth's  Primeval 
crust  has  been  repeatedly  folded  and  racked  by  *eace 
gigantic  forces,  this  isolated  district  rested  undis- 
turbed in  the  sun  beneath  a  warm  and  shallow  sea 
for  a  million  years  and  more.  Thus  during  geologic 
ages  its  sand  and  clay  were  slowly  piled  up,  layer 
on  layer,  until  at  last  the  emergence  of  the  Sierras 
dragged  it  too  above  the  Gulf.  Forces  of  erosion 
then  began  to  work,  and  the  river  swept  away  — 
as  sleepily  —  most  of  what  the  sea  had  before  laid 
down,  leaving  only  scattered  flat-topped  buttes  or 
mesas,  to  testify  to  former  levels  of  the  ancient  plain. 

Two  miles  of  vertical  depth  above  the  present  Erosion 
canyon  rim  were  thus  washed  away.1    But  at  that  ^'omilfs 

,.     J  ,  J      .  .  deep 

dim  point  in  time  and  space,  general  erosion  was 
sharply  checked,  the  flinty  limestones  of  the  sub- 
carboniferous  interposing  their  firm  resistance  to 
the  gnawing,  sprawling  stream,  and  forming  the 
upper  stratum  of  the  present  Coconino  plateau. 
The  river  now  had  to  get  down  to  business  in  order 
to  break  through  the  flinty  crusts;  this  once  ac- 
complished at  the  area  of  deepest  current,  it  began 
to  narrow  its  bounds.  Growing  then  progressively 
deeper  and  swifter,  it  made  relatively  quick  work  of 
a  mile  of  secondary  rocks,  and  dropping  persistently 
from  stratum  to  stratum  is  at  present  engaged  in  A  tough 
tearing  away  the  earth's  granite  core  at  the  bottom  & 
—  a  tough  job  in  which  it  has  already  made  some 
progress. 

1  According  to  Clarence  E.  Dutton,  "Tertiary  History  of  the  Grand  Can- 
yon," 1882,  the  area  of  maximum  denudation  is  from  13,000  to  15,000  square 
miles,  and  the  average  thickness  of  the  strata  removed  about  10,000  feet. 

C623  3 


The  Days  of  a  Man  [1898 

That  the  river  did  all  this  alone  and  unaided, 
neither  ice  nor  frost,  neither  earthquake  nor  moun- 
tain-folding having  left  its  mark  on  the  canyon,  is 
at  once  evident  to  the  geologist.     Ice  would  have 
sculpture     ma(je  a  iake  of  jt;    frosts  wou\£  have  sloped  back 

its  cliffs;  earthquakes  would  have  crumbled  its 
walls;  arid  mountain-making  would  have  uptilted 
its  strata.  In  the  simplest,  easiest,  and  laziest 
fashion  rocks  were  deposited  in  the  first  place  —  in 
the  simplest,  easiest,  and  laziest  fashion  they  have 
been  washed  away  again;  and  a  view  from  the  rim 
almost  anywhere  shows  at  a  glance  how  it  was  done. 
Away  from  the  canyon,  however,  through  western 
Arizona  monstrous  lava  intrusions,  covering  hun- 
dreds of  square  miles  and  even  rising  into  high 
mountains,  are  scattered  here  and  there,  the  most 
important  being  the  San  Francisco  Peaks. 

The  remarkable  old  winding  trail  down  which  we 
made  our  way  to  the  turbulent  river  (a  stiff  trip, 
especially  on  the  return)  was  the  work  of  the  noted 
guide,  John  Hance,  a  native  of  East  Tennessee. 
Hair-  Hance  was  a  humorist  of  rare  degree.  From  the 
of  brink  °f  t^le  abyss  he  used  touchingly  to  show  the 
whitened  skeleton  of  a  horse  a  mile  below,  and  tell 
a  marvelous  tale.  Riding  one  day  along  the  Rim, 
he  was  attacked  and  surrounded  by  Navajo  Indians, 
who  barred  every  ordinary  way  of  escape.  Spurring 
on  his  horse,  therefore,  he  took  a  hazardous  leap 
into  the  Canyon.  Near  the  bottom,  however,  he 
had  the  presence  of  mind  to  slip  to  the  ground,  suf- 
fering some  bruises,  of  course,  but  saving  his  life, 
though  at  the  cost  of  a  faithful  animal. 

On  another  occasion  (so  he  said)  he  was  down  by 
the  river,  angling  for  the  Squawfish  of  the  Colorado 
[624] 


i898]  A  Fish  Story 


—  Ptychocheilus  Indus  — a  huge  chub  three  or 
four  feet  long.  But  as  it  naturally  gets  very  hot  on 
the  canyon  floor  during  the  middle  of  the  day,  he 
lay  in  the  shade  of  a  mesquite,  tied  the  line  to  his 
boot,  and  promptly  fell  asleep.  Soon  there  came  a 
mighty  tug,  and  before  he  could  lift  a  hand  an 
enormous  fish  had  hauled  him  bodily  into  the  stream! 
Perceiving  at  once  that  it  was  making  for  deep  water  The 
with  plain  intent  to  drown  him,  but  wishing  to  save 
as  much  of  his  line  as  possible,  he  went  down  it, 
hand  over  hand,  almost  to  the  hook.  Then  taking 
out  a  knife,  he  cut  loose,  gave  the  fish  a  kick  in  the 
jaw,  and  swam  back  to  shore.  At  this  point  in  the 
story  he  pensively  observed:  "There  is  nothing  so 
desperate  as  an  angry  fish/' 

A  third  egregious  yarn  related  to  his  perilous  en- 
counter with  an  infuriated  bear  from  which  he 
escaped  by  climbing  a  tree.  The  harrowing  details 
have  slipped  from  my  mind,  but  I  distinctly  recall 
the  solemn  manner  with  which  he  pointed  out  the 
identical  tree  as  evidence  of  good  faith. 


After  some  days  about  the  Canyon  our  original  On  to 
group  dissolved,  eight  of  us  proceeding  in  accord-  Acoma 
ance  with  previous  arrangement  to  alluring  Acoma. 
Besides    the    valiant    "Lion,"    his    little    daughter 
Turbese   (now  Mrs.    Frank   Fiske),   and  ourselves, 
the   party   consisted   of  Theodore   H.    Hittell,   the 
well-known  historian  of  California,  Miss  Catherine 
Hittell,  his  daughter,  Milnor  Roberts,  our  student 
companion    on    various    previous    excursions,    and 

C  625  3 


The  Days  of  a  Man  £1898 

F.  W.  Stephenson,  a  young  business  man  of  San 
Francisco. 

Acoma,  the  oldest  "continuing  city"  in  America, 
is  one  of  a  chain  of  ancient  settlements,  nineteen  in 
number,  of  varying  size  and  importance,  generically 
Pueblo  called  pueblos.1  Omitting  Acoma,  the  most  striking 
iowe™leand  of  the  group,  the  best  known  are  Zuni,  Taos,  Moqui, 
Cochiti,  and  Isleta.  All  are  peopled  by  the  "Pueblo 
Indians,"  to  use  the  common  term,  a  group  com- 
prising six  branches  of  one  sedentary,  aboriginal 
stock,  each  division  having  its  own  language  or 
dialect,  but  (according  to  Lummis)  all  probably 
descended  from,  or  more  exactly  identical  with,  cliff 
dwellers  of  an  earlier  day,  the  different  methods  of 
life  being  more  or  less  bound  up  with  differing  local 
conditions.  "To  the  largest  of  these  tribes,  known 
as  the  Queres,  counting  over  3000  souls  and  with 
seven  towns,  Acoma  and  Cochiti  belong." 
Communal  The  characteristic  Pueblo  architecture  was  ob- 
defense  viously  planned  for  defense  against  the  roving  and 
predatory  Apaches  and  Navajos  frequenting  the 
region;  the  same  factor  also  obviously  determined 
the  location  of  most  of  the  original  settlements. 
Taos,  however,  differs  from  the  others  in  its  two 
six-storied  dwellings,  monstrous  human  hives  as 
it  were,  and  Isleta  lies  on  level  ground  conveniently 
near  the  Rio  Grande  with  its  unlimited  supply  of 
water.  Some  of  the  rest,  less  fortunate  in  the  last 
respect  even  though  better  protected,  depend  wholly 
on  summer  rains  to  fill  their  tank-like  excavations 
in  the  rock.  In  modern  times  a  few  "daughter" 
pueblos  have  arisen;  Laguna  on  the  Santa  Fe 
railway,  for  example,  is  an  overflow  mainly  (though 

1  The  Spanish  noun  pueblo  is,  of  course,  ordinarily  applied  to  any  town. 

£6263 


,  i  m  K>», 


1898]        Our  Oldest  Continuing  City 

not  entirely)  from  Acoma,  and  Acomita,  over- 
shadowed by  the  huge  Mesa  Prieta  a  few  miles  farther 
west,  serves  in  some  sense  as  a  summer  resort. 

Acoma  itself  perches  weirdly  on  a  mighty,  flat- 
topped  table  or  mesa  of  bright-red  sandstone  some 
seventy  acres  in  extent  and  edged  by  vertical  cliffs 
355  feet  in  height,  deep-gashed  and  eroded  into 
fantastic  buttresses  and  pinnacles.  Moreover,  to 
add  to  the  generally  uncanny  effect,  the  mesa  con- 
sists of  two  nearly  equal  parts  joined  by  a  narrow 
rock  isthmus,  though  only  the  northern  and  more 
level  section  is  inhabited. 

"The  home  of  half  a  thousand  quaint  lives  and 
half  a  thousand  years  of  romance/' 1  Acoma  was  v 
already  ancient  when  (in  1540)  Coronado,  the  ex- 
plorer, came  upon  it  on  his  way  westward  from 
Zuni  in  search  of  the  mythical  "Gran  Quivira," 
and  before  his  discovery  of  the  Grand  Canyon. 
With  his  intrepid  but  peaceable  band  he  gave  no 
cause  for  resentment.  Indeed,  to  the  Acomas  the 
visitors  seemed  like  "fair  gods,"  and  were  allowed 
to  proceed  unhindered.  Spanish  soldiers,  arriving  Revolt  and 
later,  were  not  so  fortunate ;  the  history  of  Acoma  massacre 
as  a  nominal  vassal  of  Spain  was  marked  by 
bloody  insurrections  and  fierce  encounters,  during 
one  of  which  (1599)  the  "eternal  battlements"  were 
stormed  by  Ofiate,  and  the  pueblo  was  temporarily 
crushed.  In  1680,  however,  the  Queres  tribes  rose 
as  a  body,  killing  all  the  Spaniards  in  what  is  now 
New  Mexico,  —  upward  of  five  hundred  colonists 
and  missionaries,  —  and  it  was  not  until  1700  that 
Acoma  reappeared  in  history,  its  church  rebuilt 

1  See  "  A  City  in  the  Sky:  The  Land  of  Poco  Tiempo";  Charles  F.  Lummis. 

1:627:1 


The  Days  of  a  Man  £1898 

and  its  people  restored  to  the  Catholic  fold.  Mean- 
while,  in  view  of  reluctant  conversion,  the  priests 
wisely  and  by  tacit  consent  allowed  their  charges 
to  retain  enough  of  pagan  customs  to  bind  together 
the  old  and  the  new. 

The  houses,  substantially  built  of  stones  held 
together  by  clay  cement,  constitute  three  long 
blocks,  each  a  thousand  feet  in  length  and  cut  by 
partitions  into  separate  homes  without  interior 
communication.  At  the  front,  facing  a  rude  street, 
the  lowest  and  widest  of  the  two  or  three  receding 
stories  of  which  each  unit  is  made  had  in  former 
times  neither  window  nor  door,  entrance  being  in- 
variably by  means  of  a  ladder  drawn  up  at  night. 
The  house  From  the  vantage  point  of  the  flat  terraces  intruders 
a  fortress  cou\£  be  easily  detected  and  fought  off,  and  the 
dwellings  as  a  whole  form  what  is  essentially  a 
great  communal  fortress,  the  forbidding  rear  wall 
of  which  rises  sheer  and  unbroken  to  the  roof. 
Translucent  gypsum  (selenite)  made  passable  win- 
dows before  glass  became  available,  and  the  living 
rooms  have  tiny  corner  fireplaces  to  furnish  a  degree 
of  warmth.  It  will  thus  be  seen  that  the  Pueblo 
folk  had  of  themselves  reached  a  respectable  level 
of  orderly  living  long  before  they  learned  to  use  an 
iron  cook  stove.  They  are,  if  anything,  over-clothed, 
especially  the  women,  who  wear  expensive  but 
modest  and  quaintly  attractive  dress;  and  in  gen- 
eral intelligence,  as  well  as  in  moral  stamina,  they 
rank  high. 

The  large  and  picturesque  Acoma  church  stands 
on  the  eastern  edge  of  the  mesa.  In  front  is  the 
crowded  cemetery,  a  huge  stone  box  nearly  200  feet 
square  and  40  feet  deep  at  the  edge,  which  it  took 
C628  3 


1898]  A  coma  Today 


forty  years  to  fill,  all  the  earth  having  been  labori- 
ously brought  up  in  baskets  from  the  plain  below. 
While  we  were  there,  I  noticed  a  man  digging  a  grave 
and  occasionally  throwing  out  an  old  bone.  The 
Indian  boy  looking  on  said:  "He  been  there  long 
enough;  get  out,  give  other  fellow  a  chance." 

Acoma  is  now  reached  by  three  accessible  trails, 
two  of  them  ancient,  ladder-like,  and  most  pre-  trails 
cipitous,  the  third  a  recent  broad,  curving  road  of 
easy  grade.  Down  this  last,  hundreds  of  community 
ponies,  burros,  and  cattle  are  driven  every  morn- 
ing, with  much  clatter  of  hoofs,  to  graze  on  the  plain 
below,  and  up  it  they  return  each  night  to  shelter. 

The  Acoma  holdings,  confirmed  by  federal  patent, 
comprise  96,000  acres  mostly  mountainous  and  very 
scantily  timbered  with  dwarf  pine  (pinon)  and  red 
cedar.  But  great  patches  of  arable  land  bordering 
the  little  rivers,  the  Agua  Azul  and  the  San  Jose, 
yield  abundant  crops  of  maize,  besides  wheat, 
beans,  chili  (red  pepper),  and  muskmelons,  and 
bear  small  orchards  of  peaches.  The  handsome 
Acoma  terra  cotta  pottery,  decorated  with  red,  *ottery 
black,  and  white,  is  well  known  to  collectors,  the 
use  of  white  earth  being  peculiar  to  this  one  pueblo. 

Lummis  being  persona  grata  in  the  home  of  Martin  Fine 
Valle,  the  former  "governor  general,"  his  grandson,  court"y 
Juan  Jose  Valle,   extended   his  hospitality  to  the 
ladies   and  myself,  while  the  others   retreated  by 
night   to  the  old  monastery.     It  was  also  courte- 
ously arranged  that  I  should  have  first  chance  at 
the  kitchen  stove  so  that  we  might  prepare  and  eat 
our  breakfast  before  the  household  was  astir.    We 
had,   of  course,   brought  our  own  provisions,   but 

£6293 


The  Days  of  a  Man  £1898 

these  were  supplemented  by  the  purchase  of  local 
supplies  —  a  haunch  of  goat  and  a  few  pounds  of 
cornmeal  ground  in  primitive  fashion  with  a  stone 
metate.  As  the  native  maize  is  purplish  or  deep 
lavender  in  color,  from  it  I  prepared,  as  my  choicest 
contribution  to  the  bill  of  fare,  a  most  aesthetic- 
looking  bread  and  porridge. 

Camera  The  Acomas,  like  other  Indians  I  have  met,  ob- 
maglc  ject  to  being  photographed,  their  idea  being  that 
the  picture  magically  steals  away  an  outer  skin  of 
whatever  it  represents.  Nevertheless,  through  the 
charming  but  timorous  children  of  the  table-land, 
won  by  a  generous  largesse  of  sweetmeats,  I  finally 
succeeded  in  reaching  the  hearts  of  their  parents, 
whereupon,  by  Lummis'  ingenuity,  reluctance  toward 
the  camera  was  partially  overcome. 

Dizzy  In  the  course  of  our  six  days  at  Acoma  we  trav- 

ways  ersed  several  strange  and  narrow  ways,  among  them 
the  treacherous  "split  trail"  and  the  unique  "Camino 
del  Padre"  l  by  which  we,  like  the  good  Father,  first 
climbed  to  "the  city  in  the  sky."  Our  leader  him- 
self went  up  and  down  the  long-abandoned  and 
practically  impassable  north  trail  twisting  over 
bulging  precipices  —  a  feat  never  before  accom- 
plished by  a  white  man. 

In  the  central  square  we  passed  the  obscure 
trapdoor  leading  to  a  sacred  underground  chamber 
in  which,  it  is  said,  primordial  rites  are  still  observed ; 
and  exploring  a  score  of  rocky  nooks  hid  beneath 
the  overhanging  promontories,  we  now  and  again 
touched  the  brink  of  other  ancient  mysteries.  In 

1  "Outside  of  the  pueblo  towns  there  is  not  another  footway  so  picturesque 
in  all  the  three  Americas."  Lummis,  "Three  Weeks  in  Wonderland";  The 
Land  of  Sunshine ,  August,  1898. 

C  630:1 


18983  Fiesta  of  San  yuan 

secret  shrines  lay  little  bunches  of  feathered  "prayer 
sticks";  sacrificial  caves  offered  refuge  from  the  i 
thunderstorm  due  regularly  every  afternoon;  and 
a  single,  crumbling  cliff-house,  secreted  under  the 
remote  edge  of  the  south  mesa,  bore  its  own  un- 
fathomed  portent. 

A  half  mile  from  the  town  lies  the  great  rock 
water-tank  or  reservoir  filled  by  summer  rains. 
From  it  daily  files  of  women  move  statuesquely 
over  rough  and  narrow  trails  across  the  "crag 
hyphen"  which  joins  the  two  mesas,  a  gay  tinaja 
securely  balanced  on  each  head. 

Our  last  day  at  Acoma  was  marked  by  the  cele- 
bration of  the  Fiesta  of  San  Juan.  This  began 
early  with  a  beating  of  drums,  followed  by  a  pro- 
cession through  the  pueblo  and  down  the  great 
trail.  But  the  principal  event  of  the  day  was  the  A 
gallo  (cock)  race,  in  which  lusty  youths  upright  in  race 
their  saddles  on  swift  ponies  dashed  by,  trying  to 
grasp  by  the  neck  a  cock  hung  high  above.  In  the 
final  ceremony,  that  of  bread-giving,  women  tossed 
bread  and  other  gifts  from  the  housetops  to  the 
participants  in  the  race. 

General  enjoyment  of  San  Juan's  day  was  some- 
what diminished  by  the  arrival  that  morning  of 
the  devoted  Miss  Taylor,  medical  missionary  at 
Acomita,  whose  painful  duty  it  was  to  vaccinate  a 
round  hundred  wailing  kids.  As  we  ourselves  pre- 
viously discovered,  smallpox  had  broken  out  in  one 
of  the  homes ;  and  vaccination  is  the  white  man's  The  white 
effective  incantation  against  one  of  the  Indian's 
awful  scourges. 


1:631  3 


man  s  in- 
cantation 


The  Days  of  a  Man  £1898 


Foreign  and  fascinating  as  we  found  Acoma  to 
be,  it  was  not  the  chief  end  and  aim  of  our  pilgrim- 
age.  Three  miles  away  and  still  higher  rises  "Kat- 
zi'mo>"  the  Enchanted.  This  primordial  strong- 
hold, austere,  silent,  deserted  but  unforgotten  for 
a  thousand  years,  dominates  the  plain  and  chal- 
lenges every  eye.  For  from  bottom  to  top  of  its 
430  feet  it  presents  a  curving  succession  of  sheer 
rock  walls  with  only  a  single  break  and  that  ap- 
of  parently  inaccessible.  Tradition  nevertheless  in- 

Katumo        sjsts    ^^    Jt    wag    JQng    agQ    ^    sjte    Qf   an    ancestral 

Queres  pueblo,  access  to  which  was  destroyed  one 
day  when  a  mighty  cloudburst  swept  away  in  an 
instant  the  ladder-like  trail  ascended  by  toe-holes 
cut  in  the  rock.  Aghast  at  the  destruction,  and 
confounded  by  what  they  took  to  be  the  wrath  of 
the  gods,  the  frightened  workers  in  the  fields  below 
dared  make  no  attempt  to  regain  their  homes. 
So  abandoning  to  their  fate  the  three  old  women  who 
had  been  left  that  morning  on  the  top,  they  moved 
over  to  the  next  mesa,  where  in  time  they  developed 
the  present  settlement  of  Acoma. 

So  goes  the  legend.     Accepting  it  as  genuine,  a 

belief  justified  by  intimate  knowledge  of  the  people, 

"Disen-      Lummis  printed  the  interesting  story.     Its  credi- 

chanting"    biiity  was   then   questioned   by   Professor  William 

the  mesa        T*II  r    T»   •  i          r        i        •   i 

Lib  bey  ot  rnnceton,  who  forthwith  set  out  to  in- 
vestigate the  uninhabited  rock.  Employing  a  mor- 
tar, he  succeeded  in  throwing  a  stout  rope  across 
Katzimo  at  its  narrowest  part,  and  by  means  of 
this  was  himself  pulled  to  the  top  in  a  boatswain's 
chair.  There,  during  a  hasty  examination,  he  found 
C  632  ] 


1898]  Tradition  Justified 

no  evidence  of  former  occupancy,  and  the  usual 
daily  afternoon  thunderstorm  being  imminent,  he 
hurried  down  to  telegraph  to  the  press  from  the 
nearest  station  that  "the  Enchanted  Mesa"  was 
now  disenchanted! 

A  lively  controversy  followed,  and  a  more  thorough  Hodge's 
investigation  was  arranged  by  Frederick  Webb  exPedltwn 
Hodge  of  the  United  States  Bureau  of  Ethnology. 
Hodge's  party  contained  (besides  himself)  Major 
Pradt  of  Laguna,  United  States  deputy  surveyor, 
A.  C.  Vroman  of  Pasadena,  photographer,  and  H.  C. 
Hoyt  of  Chicago.  By  scrambling  up  the  224  feet 
of  broken  talus  thrown  down  from  above,  they 
reached  the  foot  of  a  perpendicular  wall  about 
thirty  feet  in  height.  From  that  point,  by  means 
of  special  interlocking  six-foot  ladders  and  suitable 
ropes,  though  not  without  serious  difficulty,  in  a 
little  more  than  two  hours  they  attained  the  summit, 
where  they  spent  the  night.  On  the  bare  rock  Evidences 
(from  which  practically  all  surface  soil  has  been  {jabitation 
washed  away)  they  found  abundant  and  unmis- 
takable evidence  of  former  habitation  —  flints,  ar- 
rowheads, stone  axes,  agate  chips,  beads,  and,  most 
important  of  all,  fragments  of  very  ancient  pottery 
decorated  with  a  vitreous  glaze,  "an  art  now  un- 
known to  Pueblo  potters."  Similar  artifacts,  more- 
over, had  previously  been  picked  up  by  them  in 
the  talus  below.  There  were  also  traces  of  an  ancient 
house  foundation.  As  Hodge  observed:  "Katzimo 
is  still  enchanted.  The  lore  of  a  millennium  is  not 
to  be  undone  by  a  few  hours  of  careless  iconoclasm."  l 

Lummis'  plans  involved  the  ascent  of  the  Mesa 

1  "Katzimo,  the  Enchanted"  ;  F.  W.  Hodge,  The  Land  of  Sunshine,  No- 
vember, 1897. 

C633  3 


The  Days  of  a  Man  £1898 

Encantada  by  our  party,  but  he  met  an  unexpected 
obstacle  in  the  superstitious  opposition  of  the 
A  furious  authorities  of  Acoma.  He  was  therefore  obliged  to 
ride  j-jjg  twenty-five  miles  to  Laguna  and  back,  to  ap- 
peal to  his  old  friend,  Solomon  Bibo,  the  local  store- 
keeper, an  adopted  member  of  the  tribe  and  formerly 
governor  of  the  pueblo,  before  the  necessary  per- 
mission was  accorded.  Major  Pradt  now  furnished 
the  six  ladders  used  by  Hodge  and  kindly  consented 
to  go  along.  The  local  missionary,  Mr.  Lukens,  in 
whose  house  my  wife  and  I  had  lodged  for  a  night, 
then  attached  himself  to  the  party,  as  did  also  seven 
Indians  from  Acoma. 

At  the  top  of  the  talus,  shallow  niches  dug  with 
our  knives  in  the  soft  red  rock  afforded  support  for 
the  ladders,  all  six  of  which  were  needed  to  enable 
us  to  ascend  the  first  precipice.  A  little  higher  up 
a  rise  of  five  feet  only  was  easily  surmounted ;  but 
above  this  rose  the  most  difficult  stretch  of  all,  an 
almost  perpendicular  cliff  thirty-five  feet  high,  and 
Precarious  at  its  base  the  ladders  rested  most  precariously  in 
bold  our  niches  on  the  slanting  rock.  Extra  care  being 
therefore  imperative,  Roberts  and  Stephenson 
climbed  up  ahead  with  ropes  about  their  waists 
so  that  we  might  hold  them  in  case  the  ladders 
slipped  and  let  them  fall.  Reaching  the  top  they 
anchored  these  securely,  after  which  the  rest  of  us, 
each  also  protected  by  a  rope,  went  up  in  turn. 
From  then  on  we  encountered  no  difficulty,  and 
easily  finished  the  trip,  little  Turbese,  six  years  old, 
being  the  first  to  set  foot  on  the  mesa  floor.  Our 
record  as  to  time,  it  may  interest  some  to  know, 
was  two  hours  and  ten  minutes  —  about  the  same 
as  that  of  Hodge  and  his  companions.  We  had,  of 


1898]  On  Katzimo 


course,  the  advantage  in  several  respects,  as  Major 
Pradt  had  already  made  the  ascent  and  was  there- 
fore familiar  with  the  necessary  details.  Our  party, 
however,  was  the  larger  —  containing,  moreover,  a 
child  of  six  and  a  man  of  eighty. 

The  top  of  Katzimo  is  rough  and  bare  of  soil,  as 
I  have  said,  with  only  a  few  weedy  plants  and  some 
scrubby  half-dead  cedars  by  way  of  vegetation. 
From  it  the  view  is  superb;  to  the  south,  Acoma, 
westward  the  dark  mass  of  the  Mesa  Prieta,  and  in 
the  north  the  green  dome  of  San  Mateo,the  highest 
mountain  in  New  Mexico. 

Moving  about,  we  at  once  picked  up  various  Trophies 
Indian  relics,  indisputable  proofs  of  former  oc-  f™m  tbe 
cupancy  —  among  them  eight  arrowheads,  seven 
shells  which  must  have  come  from  the  Gulf  of 
California  and  were  apparently  part  of  a  necklace, 
a  blue  turquoise  pendant,  and  two  agate  chips 
used  in  making  arrowheads,  besides  beads  and  a  few 
fragments  of  broken  pottery.1  The  large  cairn  of 
stones  noted  by  Hodge  and  obviously  set  up  by 
man  could  neither  be  overlooked  nor  mistaken, 
though  to  me  it  alone  bore  no  evidence  of  antiquity. 
Lummis,  burdened  as  usual  with  his  heavy  camera, 
took  a  number  of  photographs,  thereby  adding  to  his 
already  enormous  stock  of  records  of  the  Southwest. 

Going  down  was  about  as  ticklish  as  going  up,  safely 
but  we  all  reached  the  bottom  safely,  having  on  doum 
that   twenty-second   day   of  June,    1898,   brazenly 
flouted  the  gods,  and  thus  once  more,  as  it  were, 
"disenchanted"  the  Enchanted  Mesa. 

As  a  naturalist  I  was  interested  in  the  local  animal 

1  Figured  in  "Three  Weeks  in  Wonderland"  by  Charles  F.  Lummis;   The 

Land  of  Sunshine,  August,  1898. 

C63S3 


The  Days  of  a  Man  [[1898 

life  of  the  plateau  which,  at  a  general  elevation  of 
6000  feet,  extends  from  near  the  Rio  Grande  west- 
ward across  the  broad  Continental  Divide  to  the 
The  Grand  Canyon  of  the  Colorado.  About  Acoma  as 
prairie  dog  eisewnere,  especially  to  the  eastward,  "prairie- 
dog  towns'*  are  much  in  evidence.  Cynomys  is  of 
course  not  a  dog,  but  a  large,  squirrel-like,  short- 
tailed  beastie  with  the  queer  habit  of  spending 
much  of  the  day  sitting  erect,  as  if  on  guard,  at  the 
mouth  of  his  burrow.  Notwithstanding  this  watch- 
fulness, however,  his  hole  is  sadly  infested  by  the 
Burrowing  Owl  and  the  Rattlesnake,  evil  boarders 
who  devour  the  young  of  their  hosts  and  drive  the 
latter  out  of  house  and  home. 

Burrowing       The  little,  long-legged  "  Burrowing  Owl"  —  Speo- 
owl  tyto  —  with    a  shrill    yet   plaintive   call    suggesting 

that  of  the  whippoorwill,  is  a  characteristic  feature 
of  the  arid  West,  almost  as  much  so  as  the  Road 
Runner  —  Geococcyx  —  the  omnipresent  wraith  of 
cactus  and  chaparral. 

The   rattler  —  Crotalus  atrox  —  the    second    un- 
invited guest,   is  still  less  welcome  than  the  owl. 
During  our  walk  about  the  foot  of  Katzimo,  we 
frequently  caught  sight  of  a  snake   coiled  in  the 
An  entrance  of  a  dog  hole.     Accordingly  we  drew  a 

astonished   fag  one  out  ;n  tne  usual  way  by  employing  a  hooked 

rattlesnake         °.        ,t       .  ,.  **•       •          •       j  •   i  ^   i      J 

umbrella  handle.  Pinning  it  down  with  a  notched 
stick  behind  its  head,  Lummis  then  seized  it  by 
the  nape  of  the  neck  and  held  it  before  a  camera, 
his  face  carved  by  mingled  emotions,  a  study  in 
physiognomy. 

Leaving  "Wonderland"  behind  us,  we  returned  to 
Laguna,  whence  we  made  next  morning  a  short 
C636  3 


LUMMIS-JORDAN   PARTY  ON  TOP   OF  ENCHANTED  MESA 


ENCHANTED  MESA  FROM  THE  SOUTHEAST,  SHOWING 
LOCATION  OF  RUINED  ANCIENT  TRAIL 


1898]  The  Penitent  Brothers 

visit  to  Cubero,  a  Mexican  village  up  the  road  near 
the  foot  of  Mount  San  Mateo.  The  neighboring 
hamlet  of  San  Mateo  on  the  mountain  slope  is  said 
to  be  the  most  un-American  community  in  our 
nation,  it  being  the  abode  of  "the  Penitent  Brothers" 
(Los  Hermanos  Penitentes)  so  graphically  described 
by  Lummis.1  These  are  the  degenerate  remnants  of 
an  old  Spanish  order,  the  members  of  which  chastise 
themselves  in  Passion  Week  to  expiate  the  sins  of 
a  year.  Ordinarily,  they  use  cactus  thorns  and  strange 
other  minor  instruments  of  torture  —  though  a  customs 
more  or  less  real  crucifixion  has  occasionally  been 
staged  as  part  of  their  annual  repentance.  'Peni- 
tentes overflow  into  the  dull  village  of  Cubero;  we 
saw  none,  however,  —  they  were  not  in  season,  — • 
but  an  Impenitent  Brother  (Lummis)  drove  us  back 
at  a  scandalously  rattling  speed,  shortening  the 
thirteen  miles  by  taking  each  arroyo  seco  at  a  jump. 

Looking  back  on  our  experiences  in  and  about  Home- 
Acoma,  I  found  myself  most  of  all  impressed  by  l™b™fines 
the  dim  glimpse  it  gave  into  the  life  of  a  primitive 
people,  gentle,  ingenious,  home-loving  farmers  settled 
in  a  land  where  farming  was  most  difficult,  both 
because  of  the  barrenness  of  the  land  and  the  bad- 
ness of  their  neighbors.  Surrounded  by  nomad 
hordes  with  no  calling  but  war,  no  industry  but  the 
chase,  their  decent,  substantial  dwellings  set  on  in- 
hospitable cliffs  ascended  only  by  toe-holes  and  stone 
ladders,  testify  to  the  virility  of  their  native  civiliza- 
tion. 

1  See  "The  Land  of  Poco  Tiempo." 


1:6373 


CHAPTER  TWENTY-FIVE 


A  long  EXTENDING  the  regular  holiday  vacation  at  each 
holiday  end)  jn  December,  1898,  and  January,  1899,  Mrs. 
Jordan  and  I,  in  company  with  a  number  of  friends, 
visited  the  interior  of  Mexico.  The  business  man- 
agement of  the  trip  was  attended  to  by  John  E. 
McDowell,  then  a  Stanford  senior,  since  for  many 
years  assistant  registrar,  and  now  alumni  secretary, 
of  the  University.  In  the  company  were  Professors 
Dudley  and  John  0.  Snyder  of  Stanford;  William 
T.  Reid  of  Belmont;  Mrs.  Leib,  wife  of  Judge  Leib, 
and  their  daughter  Elna,  now  Mrs.  William  H. 
Wright;  Mr.  George  M.  Bowman,  a  banker  of  San 
Jose,  and  his  daughter  Edna,  now  Mrs.  Charles  J. 
Kuhn;  Charles  A.  Story,  a  Stanford  student  of  fine 
literary  ability,  whose  early  death  cut  short  a 
promising  career;  and  Edward  C.  Ely,  a  lad  from  St. 
Matthew's  School,  later  a  graduate  of  Yale. 
siestas  In  these  pages  I  cannot  attempt  to  do  even  partial 

dtZ*"f*g  justice  to  our  varied    impressions  of  the  land  with 

with  fiestas   J.  •1-1  11 

its  contrasting  glories  and  squalor,  but  the  trip 
was  highly  interesting  and  instructive.  Mexico's 
teeming  millions,  ignorant,  superstitious,  and  ill- 
nurtured,  with  little  self-control  and  no  conception 
of  industry  or  thrift,  —  lacking,  indeed,  most  of 
our  Anglo-Saxon  virtues,  —  had  yet  for  me  a  certain 
compelling  fascination.  Moreover,  in  the  mass  are 
many  of  pure  Indian  blood  retaining  the  sturdy 
traits  of  the  Aztec,  and  others  who  with  freedom 
and  education,  especially  vocational  training,  would 
£638  3 


18983  Days  of  Porfirio  Diaz 

develop    admirable    powers    of    skill    and    helpful- 
ness. 

Those  were  the  palmy  days  of  Porfirio  Diaz, 
an  Indian  who  knew  his  kind,  and  whose  rule  was 
a  singular  compound  of  tribal  affection,  hard- 
fisted  order,  and  alliance  with  foreign  interests. 
The  old  Presidente  then  enjoyed  unbounded  popu-  rhe  adored 
larity;  his  word  was  law  and  every  tongue  sounded  Presidente 
his  praise.  Communities  he  visited  would  ask  to 
be  allowed  to  add  to  their  names  the  phrase  "  de 
Porfirio  Diaz';  and  the  problem  of  ruling  an  il- 
literate and  poverty-stricken  population  in  a  land 
of  great  potential  wealth,  owned  almost  entirely 
by  Spanish  landholders  and  foreign  corporations, 
seemed  for  the  time  measurably  solved,  though  by 
methods  sure  to  break  sooner  or  later.  At  the 
best,  however,  the  problem  is  most  complex.  For 
leaving  out  of  consideration  the  character  of  the 
people  themselves,  the  very  nature  of  the  country 
and  its  industries  makes  large  holdings  a  necessity. 
Mines,  cattle  ranches,  irrigated  valleys,  rubber  plan- 
tations, all  require  large  capital  and,  by  tradition, 
servile  labor. 

Most  Mexican  towns  have  a  stately  air,  at  least 
when  seen  from  a  distance,   their  shining,   dome- 
shaped  towers  dominating  the  landscape.     But  the  view  from 
view  from  the  Heights  of  Chapultepec  across  the  C}™Pulte~ 
Valley  of  Mexico  is  one  of  the  noblest  on  earth: 
for  majestic  background  the  two  huge  snow-crowned 
volcanoes,  Popocatepetl  and   Iztaccihuatl,1  next,  in 
the  middle  distance,  the  great  city  with  its  glitter- 

1  In  Aztec  popo'ca,  smoke;  te'pttl,  mountain;  iz'tac,  white;  ci'buatl,  woman. 
Popocatepetl  is  17,794,  Iztaccihuatl,  16,200  feet  high. 

£639:1 


"The  Days  of  a  Man  [1898 

ing  domes  of  brass,  and,  just  below,  the  superb, 
somber  Mexican  Cypresses  —  Taxodium  distichum 
—  last  relics  of  a  giant  tropical  forest  famous  since 
the  days  of  Cortez. 

An  From  Mexico  City  we  went  up  the  mountain- 

exqmsiu     £fe  to  loveiy  Cuernavaca,  capital  of  Morelos,  over- 

outlook  ill  r  r    -r»  i  i 

topped  by  the  perfect  cone  of  Popocatepetl;  and 
from  there  we  made  a  trip  on  horseback  to  the 
ancient  Aztec  fortified  town  of  Xochicalco,  its 
crumbling  stone  walls  still  embellished  with  in- 
teresting carvings  symbolic  of  vanished  fancies. 
"Los  At  Guadalajara,  reluctantly  but  somewhat  as  a 
matter  °f  duty,  I  attended  a  bullfight,  a  disgusting 
spectacle  of  disemboweled  blind  horses  and  clever 
butchery  of  dazed  and  disconsolate  bulls;  the  on- 
lookers, moreover,  displayed  national  customs  in 
their  most  offensive  aspect.  The  two  classes  into 
which  Mexicans  divide  are  sharply  set  off  at  the 
Arena.  In  the  reserved  section  marked  Ombre 
(shadow)  sit  the  people  of  importance  —  land- 
holders and  professional  men,  Spanish  for  the  most 
part,  self-contained  and  perfect  in  deportment,  at 
least  unless  unduly  provoked.  Opposite  them,  in 
the  Sol  (sun)  swarm  the  peons,  mestizos  mainly, 
with  high-pointed  straw  sombreros  and  red  serapes, 
the  same  noisy,  impulsive,  ruthless,  hot-tempered, 
uncontrolled  mob  which  has  flocked  about  the  bloody 
sands  ever  since  gladiatorial  combats  and  bull- 
fights began.  Yet  Guadalajara  seemed  the  most 
prosperous,  as  it  certainly  is  "the  cleanest,  finest, 
brightest,  and  healthiest  of  Mexican  cities"  — 
people  of  pure  Spanish  extraction  being  there  in  the 
majority. 

During  our  stay  in  that  region  we  were  all  guests 
1:6403 


18983  Hacienda  Atequi%d 

for  a  day  and  a  night  at  the  ample  hacienda  of  Abundant 
Atequiza,  a  great  rancho  twenty-four  miles  out  of  bosPltallty 
Guadalajara,  near  Lake  Chapala,  Jalisco;  for  Senor 
Joaquin  Cuesta,  head  of  the  house,  whom  I  had 
previously  met  in  San  Francisco,  had  invited  us  to 
visit  him  when  in  his  neighborhood.  The  lordly 
courtesy  and  hospitality  of  our  host  we  found 
thoroughly  delightful.  Going  about  the  estate,  I 
was  much  interested  in  the  contrast  between  pro- 
gressive American  methods  and  the  primitive  cus- 
toms of  an  unscientific  people.  Don  Joaquin,  for 
example,  was  operating  a  modern  flouring  mill 
stocked  with  machinery  from  Rochester,  New  York, 
but  the  soil  was  still  plowed  with  crooked  sticks 
because  the  peons  persistently  refused  to  have 
anything  to  do  with  gringo  inventions. 
With  the  revolution  of  1912  came  the  downfall  Great 

of  the  hacienda  system,  and  the  seizure  of  the  land  esiaies, , 
i  11  11     i    i  j   •     •  selzed  by 

by  the  people,  who  now  usually  hold  it  in  com-  the  people 

munistic  fashion.  As  is  generally  recognized,  this 
upheaval  paralleled  that  in  France  in  the  eighteenth 
century  and  the  recent  one  in  Russia;  inevitable 
also  as  it  was,  it  necessarily  involved  terrible  in- 
justice and  misery  to  a  tenderly  reared  class  which 
had,  however,  not  been  the  one  to  suffer  before!  The 
fate  of  Atequiza  formed  no  exception  to  the  common 
lot,  and  Modesto  Rolland,  a  Mexican  friend,  tells 
me  that  the  courtly  and  kindly  Don  Joaquin  was 
shot  by  Francisco  Villa  in  a  raid  in  Jalisco. 

Throughout  our  travels,  notably  at  Guadalupe 
Hidalgo,  Zacatecas,  and  Cholula,  we  were  in- 
terested in  the  votive  chapels.  To  them  people 
afflicted  by  one  or  another  malady,  ranging  from 
earthquakes  to  the  "evil  eye,"  come  from  near  and 

3 


contrasts 


"The  Days  of  a  Man  £1899 

far.  Those  who  feel  themselves  cured  leave  some 
visible  sign  of  their  gratitude.  At  Guadalupe 
Hidalgo  a  man  saved  from  shipwreck  had  put  up 
an  imposing  stone  monument  —  a  boat  with  hull, 
mast,  and  sail  —  as  an  offering  to  Our  Lady  of 
Guadalupe;  and  other  gifts  equally  strange,  though 
less  bulky,  abound  in  all  the  sacred  shrines. 

Striking  But  I  might  run  on  indefinitely  about  the  mingled 
charm  and  beggary  of  one  place  after  another; 
the  high  waterfall  of  Xico  or  the  broad  Niagara- 
like  Juanacatlan;  the  quaint  Biblical  architecture 
of  Zacatecas  which  seems  to  have  sprung  from  the 
dry  rock;  the  surprises  of  Guanajuato  with  its 
ancient  crypt  of  upstanding  mummies,  skeletons  of 
generations  of  oldest  inhabitants;  and  the  sad 
plight  of  fever-stricken  Vera  Cruz,  where  the  cheap- 
ness of  human  life  was  reflected  in  general  reck- 
lessness and  dissipation. 

Mount  I  might  dwell  on  the  grandeur  of  the  Pico  de 

Orizaba  Orizaba,  its  18,225  feet  of  brilliant  green  topped 
with  dazzling  white  rising  in  lines  of  perfect  beauty 
above  the  tropical  city  which  bears  its  name,  and 
which  nestles  among  forest  trees  hung  with  orchids 
and  Bromelias,  —  the  whole  mountain-mass  a  suc- 
cession of  zones  of  vegetation  with  hardly  a  parallel 

Exotic  in  the  world.  I  might  write  of  Cordoba,  smothered 
in  tropical  vegetation  and  rioting  in  luscious  fruits, 
or  of  the  wild  delights  of  the  valley  of  the  Rio  de 
las  Balsas  where  the  forests  swarm  with  far-away 
birds  —  not  only  parrots,  but  black  toucans  also, 
with  bills  much  too  large  for  their  bodies,  strange 
woodland  creatures  one  does  not  meet  every  day. 
Or,  finally  I  might  recall  Alpine  Amecameca1  on 

1  Accented  Ame'came'ca. 

£642 : 


1899]  We  Go  a -Fishing 

the   foothills   below    Popocatepetl's    eternal    snows,  Alpine 
from  which  one  has  a  magnificent  outlook  down-  belgbts 
ward  as  well  as  upward.     But  other  things  demand 
attention,  and  I  must  not  linger  here. 

Leaving  the  party  from  time  to  time,  Snyder  and 
I  made  several  large  collections  —  one  at  Lake 
Chapala,  famous  as  the  choicest  winter  resort  of 
migratory  birds  on  our  continent,  one  at  Puente  de 
Ixtla  in  a  tributary  of  the  Rio  de  las  Balsas,  and 
one  from  the  sea  at  Vera  Cruz.  Specially  interest-  A  problem 
ing  is  the  fish  fauna  of  the  three  volcanic  lakes,  ™ 
Chapala,  Patzcuaro,  and  Zirahuen,  as  each  separate 
body  of  water  contains  several  species  of  closely 
related,  large  atherine  fishes  or  Silversides  of  the 
genus  Chirostoma,  all  of  very  delicate  flesh  and 
locally  known  as  pescados  blancos,  "white  fishes," 
or  pescados  del  rey,  "fishes  of  the  king."  Chiros- 
toma occurs  only  in  various  lakes  of  central  Mexico, 
though  its  allies  are  scattered  over  the  warmer 
parts  of  the  world.  But  the  singular  feature  is  that 
the  dozen  or  so  clearly  defined  species  look  very 
much  alike,  forming  an  apparently  marked  devia- 
tion from  Jordan's  Law.1  A  probable  explanation 
of  this  anomaly  is  that  earthquake  disturbances  at 
one  time  or  another  threw  together  parts  of  different 
river  basins,  thus  mingling  different  faunas. 

In  the  hills  of  Xico  near  Jalapa,  as  already  re-  The 
lated,    I    met  my   first  coral    snake,   a   venomous  cordill° 
serpent  of  great  beauty  of  color,  which  infests  the 
thickets  of  eastern   Mexico.    Its  Sierran  mimic,  the 
red-banded  King  Snake,  a  sworn  enemy  to  the  rattle- 
snake, has  the  playful   habit   of  winding  suddenly, 

1  See  Chapter  xiv,  page  329. 

C643  3 


The  Days  of  a  Man 


[1899 


Diaz  the 
man 


animal 


constrictor-like,  around  the  victim  and  thus  breaking 
its  neck.1 

In  Mexico  City  I  had  an  interview  with  Porfirio 
Diaz,  whom  I  found  to  be  a  fine-looking,  plain, 
and  direct  man,  giving  an  impression  of  both  in- 
telligence and  power.  As  he  spoke  no  English,  I 
told  him  in  my  best  Spanish  that  "he  had  made  a 
great  nation  of  Mexico/'  "No,"  said  he;  "el 
germillo  de  una  gran  nation"  (the  little  germ  of  a 
great  nation).  Being  then  informed  that  I  was  a 
naturalist,  he  spoke  of  something  which  was  to 
him  a  standing  puzzle;  could  I  explain  its  nature? 
La  pianta  It  was  called  the  planta  animal  and  it  lived  in 
Oaxaca,  his  native  state.  Originally  a  large,  clumsy 
beetle,  or  rather  cicada,  it  burrowed  into  the  ground 
and  next  sprouted  up  as  a  plant  about  four  inches 
high  — just  a  stem  with  a  clump  of  branches  and  not 
a  single  leaf. 

As  I  had  never  heard  of  it,  Diaz  turned  to  an  officer 
present,  asking  him  to  "go  and  get  a  planta  animal 
for  Dr.  Jordan  to  examine."  The  gentleman  seemed 
staggered  by  the  order,  and  said  he  did  not  know 
where  to  look.  I  then  suggested  that  he  could  prob- 
ably find  a  specimen  in  the  Museo  Nacional,  but 
that  as  I  was  obliged  to  leave  that  evening,  he  would 
perhaps  forward  it  to  me  at  Stanford  University, 
where  I  would  have  its  nature  ascertained  and  ex- 
plained. In  due  time,  therefore,  it  arrived.  It 
was,  in  fact,  a  large  nymph  or  immature  cicada 
bearing  on  its  head  a  tough,  branching,  parasitic 
fungus  about  five  inches  long  —  a  phenomenon 
fairly  well  known  to  botanists,  and  of  which  I  re- 
turned a  full  account.  The  museum  label  bore  the 

1  "Old  Rattler  and  the  King  Snake";  Jordan,  Popular  Science  Monthly,  1899. 

£644:1 


1899]  Nature  of  the  Animal 

legend:  "Ninfa  de  cicada  (chicharra)  atacada  de 
un  hongo,  Cordyceps  sobolifera  Berk."  The  ac- 
companying card  read:  "With  the  best  compli- 
ments of  Porfirio  Diaz,  Jan.  18,  1899." 

According  to  Dr.  J.  I.  W. 
McMurphy,  the  fungologist  of 
Stanford,  Cordyceps  —  like  Clav- 
iceps,  the  ergot  of  rye  —  be- 
longs to  the  family  of  Hypo- 
creacece.  Mr.  Atkinson's  sketch 
of  the  specimen  received  will 
give  my  readers  an  accurate 
idea  of  the  unique  tragedy  of 
the  animal  which  turns  plant. 

Eleven  years  after,  at  the  Uni- 
versity of  Cambridge,  my  col- 
league, Dr.  Hans  Gadow,  then 
lately  returned  from  a  collect- 
ing expedition  in  Mexico,  related 
to  me  an  interesting  conversa- 
tion he  had  had  with  the  Presi- 
dent at  the  Palace.  Did  the 
Professor  know  the  planta  ani- 
mal of  the  state  of  Oaxaca? 
The  professor  did  not.  A  secre- 
tary was  accordingly  sent  over 
to  the  Museo  Nacional  to  get  a 
specimen  for  inspection.  This 
incident  lends  a  clue  to  Diaz' 
general  popularity,  partly  due, 
no  doubt,  to  his  careful  selection  in  advance  of 
appropriate  subjects  for  conversation! 

*    *    # 

In  the  course  of  our  stay  in  Mexico,  my  good 

C64S3 


La  planta  animal 

(about  f  natural  size). 

Drawn  by  W.  S.  Atkinson. 


The  Days  of  a  Man       *      £1899 

My  mother  died  at  my  sister's  home  in  Minneapolis, 
™iher's  at  tjie  rjpe  age  Of  eighty-six,  having  survived  not 
only  my  father  but  three  of  her  five  children  as 
well.  Her  last  years  were  spent  as  a  welcome  visitor 
alternating  between  Minnesota  and  California.  At 
Stanford  in  1896  she  regularly  attended  courses  in 
Modern  History,  while  Mrs.  Mary  C.  Dulley,  an 
American  lady  of  the  same  age,  also  with  grand- 
children enrolled  in  the  University,  was  her  com- 
panion in  the  lecture  room. 


The  Hail       In  1899  I  was  appointed  one  of  the  hundred  elec- 
Of  Fame     tors  of  «The  Haii  of  Fame  fOT  Qreat  Americans," 

of  New  York  University,  which  institution  had  re- 
cently received  (from  a  person  whose  name  is  still 
withheld)  the  sum  of  $250,000  for  the  erection  of 
an  edifice  suitable  for  the  end  in  view.  This  took 
the  form  of  a  long  colonnade  encircling  the  library 
on  University  Heights,  overlooking  the  Hudson, 
provision  being  made  therein  for  150  bronze  tablets 
to  commemorate  the  same  number  of  "great  Ameri- 
cans." The  persons  thus  honored  are  chosen  by  a 
two-thirds  majority  of  those  voting,  except  in  a  few 
cases  when,  in  a  sort  of  primary  among  the  electors 
especially  familiar  with  the  records  concerned,  the 
descriptive  phrase,  "most  justly  famous,"  has  been 
agreed  upon  —  in  which  case  only  a  majority  is 
necessary.  It  should  be  added  that  no  one  not  at 
least  ten  years  deceased  is  eligible  for  election;  and 
until  1915  all  born  in  foreign  countries  were  ex- 
cluded. 

Five  ballots  have  now  (1920)  been  taken.     The 
C6463 


1  899]          "Most  y  us  fly  Famous 


names  of  those  already  elected  I  have  arranged  for 
each  year  in  the  order  of  the  number  of  votes  re- 
ceived : 

1900  —  Washington,  Lincoln,  Webster,  Franklin,  Grant, 
Jefferson,  Marshall,  Emerson,  Fulton,  Longfellow,  Irving, 
Jonathan  Edwards,  Morse,  Farragut,  Clay,  Peabody,  Haw- 
thorne, Peter  Cooper,  Eli  Whitney,  Robert  E.  Lee,  Horace 
Mann,  Audubon,  James  Kent,  Beecher,  John  Adams,  Joseph 
Story,  Channing. 

1905  —  John  Quincy  Adams,  Lowell,  Whittier,  General 
Sherman,  Madison,  Bancroft,  Maria  Mitchell. 

1910  —  Harriet  Beecher  Stowe,  Hamilton,  Poe,  Motley, 
Bryant,  Phillips  Brooks,  Holmes,  Frances  Willard,  Andrew 
Jackson. 

1915  —  Mark  Hopkins,  Parkman,  Agassiz,  Elias  Howe, 
Joseph  Henry,  Charlotte  Cushman,  Daniel  Boone. 

1920  —  Clemens  (Mark  Twain),  W.  T.  G.  Morton,  Saint 
Gaudens,  Eads,  Roger  Williams,  Alice  Freeman  Palmer, 
Patrick  Henry. 

As  to  the  last  election,  I  may  venture  to  say  that  odd 
I  was  a  little  surprised  to  find  that  William  Penn,  omissions 
Thomas   Paine,   and   Susan   B.   Anthony  were  left 
out,  that  the  votes  for  Thoreau,  George  William 
Curtis,    and    Spencer    F.    Baird   were    recorded    as 
"scattering,"  and  that  John  Paul  Jones  received  a 
larger   endorsement    than   John    Brown,    for   while 
Jones  won  a  heroic  fight  at  sea,  Brown  turned  the 
tide  of  American  history! 

In  or  about  1914  I  was  asked  to  render  a  service  civic 
somewhat  similar  to  the  above,  by  becoming  a  mem-  *°™™ 
ber  of  the  National  Council  of  the  Civic   Forum 
of  New  York,   in  connection  with  its   "Medal  of 
Honor  for  Distinguished  Service."     The  Forum  it- 
self, to  quote  from  the  formal  statement, 

is  an  educational  institution  founded  in  1907.    Its  object  is  to 
strengthen,  without  regard  to  party  or  creed,  those  forces  which 

1:6473 


The  Days  of  a  Man  £1899 

tend  to  general  enlightenment  and  a  higher  citizenship.  The 
Forum  provides  a  national  platform  for  the  non-partisan  dis- 
cussion of  public  questions,  and  the  promotion  of  international 
good  will. 

Medd  of         The  Medal  of  Honor  was  established  in  1914,  to  express 
Honor         recognition  on  the  part  of  the  rank  and  file  of  the  American 
people  of  an  achievement  or  a  career  of  preeminent  public  service. 
The  recipients  of  the  Medal  thus  far  have  been: 
General  George  W.  .Goethals,  1914 
Thomas  A.  Edison,  1915 
Alexander  Graham  Bell,  1917 
Herbert  Hoover,  1920 

The  Medal  may  be  awarded  to  any  American  citizen  without 
regard  to  sex,  race,  or  creed,  for  distinguished  public  service 
in  any  field  of  human  activity.  Such  service  may  be  either  in 
the  form  of  a  specific  act  or  a  more  or  less  extended  career.1 


Camping        The  month  of  August  of  this  year  was  spent  by 

l^ngs    Mrs.  Jordan  and  myself  in  the  Kings  River  Canyon. 

Canyon      With  us  were  Professor  and  Mrs.  Ellwood  P.  Cub- 

berley,  both  former  students  of  mine  in  Indiana,  and 

near  by  (among  others  who  had  gone  in  some  time 

before)  Professors  Richardson,  Kellogg,  and  Guido 

Marx,  all  of  long  experience  in  the  art  of  camping. 

Twenty  years  ago  the  hundred-mile  stretch  from 
railway  to  Canyon  was  not  made  as  today  by 
automobile.  From  Sanger,  where  we  left  the  train, 
we  staged  about  two  thirds  of  the  way  to  Millwood, 
traveling  at  night  to  avoid  the  heat.  Arriving  at 
the  latter  place,  we  found  Richardson  and  Kellogg, 
who  had  generously  tramped  out  to  make  sure  we 
reached  our  destination  in  comfort  and  safety. 

1  Candidates  may  be  nominated  by  any  resident  of  the  United  States.  By 
special  exception,  no  President  may  be  named  as  candidate  during  his  term  of 
office. 

C  648  3 


1899]  Giant  Sequoias 

But  before  starting  we  took  an  interesting  side  trip 
into  the   Converse   Basin.     This  forest   depression  An  ir- 
formerly  bore  a  magnificent  group  of  giant  sequoias,  reparabl* 
then  being  converted  into  thin   boards  for  chalk 
boxes,   and  other   petty   articles  —  an  ignominious 
fate ;  as  a  matter  of  fact,  however,  the  wood  of  the 
Big  Tree  (pink  in  color)  is  brittle  and  easily  marred, 
qualities  which  injure  its  value  for  any  important 
service. 

The  largest  examples,  twenty  to  forty  feet  in 
diameter  at  the  base,  were  so  bulky  they  could 
neither  be  sawed  nor  chopped  down.  They  were 
accordingly  felled  by  dynamite  exploded  near  the 
root  and  by  the  same  agency  split  up  into  irregular 
chunks  for  the  mill.  In  this  species,  as  in  the  Coast 
redwood,  the  central  rings  are  coarse,  indicating 
rapid  growth  in  youth,  while  the  outer  ones  become 
progressively  thinner,  the  outermost  exceedingly  so 
—  a  fact  which  testifies  to  an  antiquity  even  greater  Relics  of 
than  had  been  commonly  supposed  before  annual 
increments  were  counted.  One  of  the  very  smallest 
trees,  a  dozen  feet  through,  had  about  1920  rings  in 
all.  The  central  six  feet  of  its  diameter  was  easily 
found  to  include  five  hundred,  so  that  it  must  have 
been  a  sizable  tree  at  the  time  of  the  Fall  of  Rome. 
In  another  with  a  basal  diameter  of  thirty-five  feet, 
and  torn  by  dynamite  into  strips,  the  rings  could 
not  be  counted,  but  it  is  safe  to  say  that  it  was 
upward  of  5000  years  old. 

Leaving  Millwood  with  a  small  pack-train  led  by 
John  Fox,  a  well-known  guide,  and  accompanied 
by  the  two  men  on  foot,  we  started  out  over  the 
thirty-five  miles  of  old  trail,  a  short  stretch  of  which 

C  649  3 


The  Days  of  a  Man  £1899 

soon  brought  us  to  the  General  Grant  Forest,  a 
superb  sequoia  grove,  fortunately  a  national  re- 
serve. At  Horse  Corral,  a  large  damp,  grassy  glade 
high  above  Kings  River,  we  pitched  camp  for  the 
night.  The  next  afternoon,  from  the  brink  of  the 
Canyon  we  got  a  magnificent  view  of  the  upper 
reaches  of  the  Middle  and  South  forks  but- 
tressed by  the  giant  crests  of  the  High  Sierra.  In 
all  the  mountain  country  there  is  nothing  really 
The  North  grander.  In  the  center  stands  a  broad  peak,  14,282 
Palisade  feet  high,  the  culmination  of  a  long  ridge  with  several 
teeth.  Studying  the  map,  I  was  surprised  to  find 
that  the  salient  mass  bore  the  name  of  Mount 
Jordan,  given  by  Professor  B.  C.  Brown  of  Stanford, 
an  ardent  mountain-lover.  At  that  time,  however, 
it  had  never  been  climbed,  access  to  it  along  the 
Middle  Fork  and  Jordan  Creek  being  beset  by  dense 
brush  and  jagged  rocks.  In  this  case  —  as  in 
several  others  —  the  usual  custom  of  not  trying 
to  name  a  mountain  until  one  had  climbed  it  was 
disregarded.  In  1903  it  was  ascended  by  Professor 
Joseph  NV  Le  Conte  of  the  University  of  California 
and  others.  Lately  (1920)  it  has  been  shown  by 
Francis  P.  Farquhar  that  the  earliest  and  therefore 
the  proper  name  of  the  great  summit  is  the  North 
Palisade,  given  by  Whitney's  survey  in  1864.  The 
crest  bears  on  its  east  slope  a  typical  glacier,  a  mile 
square,  the  largest  in  California  of  these  vanishing 
relics  of  the  Ice  Age. 

Entering  the  Canyon,  we  encamped  at  Kanawyer's, 
in  a  noble  pine  forest  on  the  bank  of  the  river,  across 
which  towers  the  Sentinel,  a  huge,  commanding 
granite  cliff.  There  the  green  waters  of  the  trout- 
laden  stream,  the  purest  on  earth,  slip  by  with 
£6503 


NORTH  PALISADE  FROM  SUMMIT  OF  MT.  WOODWORTH, 
"MT.  JORDAN"  IN  CENTER 


KEARSARGE  PINNACLES  AND  LAKES 

Photographs  by  Professor  John  N.  Le  Conte 


1 8993  Sierran  Canyons 

mighty,  unhindered  surge.  Remembering  Henry 
van  Dyke's  charming  essays  on  "Little  Rivers," 
we  regretted  that  fate  had  never  led  him  to  a  big 
one  like  that.  It  should  be  said,  however,  that 
fortune  favored  him  at  last,  for  not  many  years 
afterward  he  cast  his  fly  in  just  such  another  stream, 
the  upper  McCloud,  which  flows  off  the  south  slope 
of  Shasta.  This  I  know,  because  at  a  San  Francisco 
dinner  in  his  honor  several  of  us  shared  the  ten- 
pound  Dolly  Varden  he  brought  back  as  evidence 
of  good  faith ! 

Kings  River  Canyon  is  one  of  a  noble  series  of 
glaciated  mountain  gorges  gouged  out  on  the  west 
flank  of  the  Sierra.  To  these  —  as  to  all  similar 
basins  —  John  Muir  applied  the  generic  term  yosem- 
ite,  the  local  Indian  name  for  the  canyon  of  the 
Merced.  Other  "yosemites"  in  California  are  those 
of  the  Kern,  Kaweah,  Upper  San  Joaquin,  Tuolumne, 
Stanislaus,  Moquelumne,  American,  Yuba,  and 
Feather.  The  two  greatest  of  them,  the  Kings 
River  Canyon  and  Yosemite  Valley,  necessarily 
challenge  comparison.  The  Yosemite  has  grander 
precipices,  majestic  waterfalls,  and  a  general  air 
of  scenic  perfection;  Nature  has  there  done  well 
and  confidently  rests  her  case.  The  Canyon  seems 
planned  on  a  larger  scale.  Its  higher  walls  slope 
backward  out  of  sight,  and  the  mountains  in  which 
it  rises  are  far  more  massive. 

In  the  Alps,  the  Lauterbrunnenthal,  the  Hinter- 
rheinthal  below  the  Spliigen,  and  the  Allee  Blanche 
might  be  accepted  geologically  as  "yosemites." 

From  our  permanent  camp  we  made  many  fine 
trips.  Goat  Mountain,  a  rugged  peak  to  the  north- 

3 


The  Days  of  a  Man  £1899 

west,  our  first  adventure,  is  a  Sierran  Rigi-Kulm, 
revealing  an  amazing  panorama  which  extends 
from  Whitney  and  Tyndall  on  the  southeast  north- 
ward to  Agassiz's  Needles  and  Mount  Lyell  at  the 
head  of  the  Yosemite.  Our  next  excursion  led  to 
loftier  heights.  Ascending  the  river  and  turning  to 
the  north  up  the  steep  trail  along  Bubb's  Creek 
with  its  boiling  cascades,  we  camped  at  Bullfrog, 
a  high  mountain  tarn  in  the  midst  of  a  bare,  slicken 
basin  with  an  elevation  of  11,000  feet.  And  from 
here,  on  the  way  to  Kearsarge  Pass — a  sudden 
University  break  in  the  main  range  —  we  climbed  the  Uni- 
Of  Cah-  versity  of  California  Peak,  which,  from  a  vantage 

forma  ->  ...          7 

Peak         point  ot  13,588  teet,  commands  a  majestic  view  in 
every  direction. 

Again,  leaving  Bubb's  at  the  forks  of  the  trail, 
we  came  to  the  deep  green  East  Lake,  near  which 
John  Muir  sketched  his  unrivaled  biography  of 
the  Water  Ouzel  —  Cinclus  —  "the  humming  bird 
of  the  California  waterfalls."  East  Lake  lies  at 
the  foot  of  a  great  basin  once  occupied  by  a  glacier 
from  the  north  side  of  Mount  Brewer,  13,577  feet, 
the  highest  peak  bounding  Kings  River  Canyon. 

Ouzel  This  depression,  mapped  by  me  for  the  Sierra  Club, 
j  cauec[  Ouzel  Basin,  and  to  each  of  the  streams 
flowing  through  (the  headwaters  of  Kings)  I  gave 
names  of  mammals  and  birds  actually  found  in  it. 
At  the  side  of  Ouzel  Basin  on  the  left  towers  a 
stalwart  rock  mass,  Crag  Ericsson,  13,625  feet. 
To  the  east  of  the  latter  lies  the  steep,  stony,  and 
very  fatiguing  Harrison  Pass,  the  watershed  sepa- 
rating the  Kings  and  the  Kern.  Beyond,  above 
timber  line,  are  numerous  small  lakes;  the  largest 
of  these  Brown  called  Lake  South  America,  from 
C  652] 


1899]  The  High  Sierra 

its  remarkable  resemblance  in  outline  to  that  of 
the  southern  continent. 

Eastward,  above  Harrison  Pass,  rises  the  jagged  Stanford 
summit  of  Stanford  University  Peak,1  13,983  feet,  p™kersity 
the  southernmost  and  slightly  lower  of  its  two 
crests  having  been  earlier  named  "Gregory's  Monu- 
ment" in  honor  of  Warren  Gregory,  a  well-known 
member  of  the  Sierra  Club,  and  since  an  associate 
of  Hoover  in  "the  C.  R.  B."  Stanford  University 
Peak  is  higher  than  any  other  point  I  have  reached 
in  my  travels,  the  top  of  the  Matterhorn  alone  ex- 
cepted.  Its  narrow  summit,  like  that  of  the  Uni- 
versity of  California  Peak,  gives  a  superb  short- 
range  view  of  the  same  glorious  quadrant  revealed 
from  the  top  of  Goat,  besides  a  peep  into  the  mighty 
chasm  bounding  its  eastern  side. 

The  general  configuratioa  of  the  central  ridges  of  Breaking 
the  High  Sierra  is  comparable  to  that  of  a  breaking  wav"  °f 

i  •  5  •      i     •         i     i          11 

wave,  each  great  ridge  or  summit  being  bulwarked 
by  a  long  slope  on  the  west  side,  though  dropping 
suddenly  in  awesome  precipices  on  the  east.  The 
ascent  of  any  of  them  is  therefore  relatively  easy 
save  for  the  long  distance  from  supplies,  and  the 
rough  boulders  and  rotten  granite  over  which  one 
must  make  his  way.  In  the  lower  levels,  also,  the 
rank  tangle  of  bushes  infested  by  lurking  rattlers 
forms  a  serious  handicap  except  where  trails  have 
already  been  cut.  But  with  time,  patience,  and 
endurance,  the  mountain-lover  may  creep  to  the 
top  of  any  peak,  as  no  special  skill  or  nervous  strain 
is  involved.  For,  as  I  have  said,  it  is  only  on 
the  east  that  one  encounters  dizzy  heights. 

1  This  should  not  be  confounded  with  Mount  Stanford  in  the  Tahoe  region, 
named  long  before  for  Leland  Stanford. 

C6533 


The  Days  of  a  Man  [^1899 

Mount  Whitney,  the  highest,  at  the  head  of  the 
Kern,  has  an  elevation  of  14,501  feet,  just  a  little 
less  than  the  Matterhorn,  14,705,  and  a  shade 
higher  than  the  Finster  Aarhorn,  14,026,  while  at 
least  twenty-two  of  our  summits  overtop  the  famous 
Jungfrau  in  the  Bernese  Oberland.  But  Mont 
Blanc,  "the  monarch  of  mountains,"  reaches  a 
height  of  15,781  feet  —  or  did,  at  least,  before  the 
last  great  rock  avalanche,  which  is  said  to  have 
lowered  its  crest. 
Alps  and  Comparing  once  more,  the  Swiss  peaks  present 
greater  variety  of  form  and  of  geological  structure, 
with  greater  contrast  in  color,  their  dazzling  snows 
being  sharply  set  off  against  green  forests  and 
flower-carpeted  pastures.  In  Switzerland  also  the 
heavy  snowfall  fills  every  higher  depression  with 
glaciers,  while  in  California,  with  its  relatively  low 
precipitation,  such  dwindling  traces  of  a  former  era 
have  (with  scant  exceptions)  long  since  passed  away. 

The  Sierras,  nevertheless,  are  richer  in  color; 
they  throb  with  life,  and  over  them  flows  a  dry, 
stimulating,  balsamic  air.  Furthermore,  a  superb 
view  from  any  summit  always  rewards  the  climber, 
for  the  celestial  blue  is  broken  only  by  the  occasional 
midday  thunderstorm.  The  Alps,  on  the  contrary, 
are  bathed  in  rain  or  swathed  in  clouds  to  a  dis- 
couraging degree,  and  the  atmosphere  is  really 
clear  only  when  the  south  wind  presages  or  the  north 
wind  follows  a  storm.  The  blast  over,  the  sky 
once  more  needs  wiping. 

Again,  the  glacial  basins  of  the  High  Sierra,  huge 
tracts  of  polished  granite  furrowed  by  streams  and 
fringed  with  mountain  vegetation,  are  more  im- 
pressive than  the  Upper  Aar,  majestic  though 


18993  The  Boer  War 

that  is.  Ouzel  Basin,  Desolation  Valley,  and  the 
slopes  of  Mount  Lyell  also  tell  us  more  of  what  ice 
can  do  than  a  living  glacier  itself.  Sierran  forests, 
moreover,  are  beyond  comparison  nobler  than  those 
of  the  Alps.  The  pine,  fir,  and  larch  woods  of 
Switzerland  are  only  second  growth,  mere  "brush" 
by  the  side  of  our  huge  pines,  spruces,  firs,  and 
cedars.  These  are  among  the  largest  trees  on  earth, 
while,  supremely  preeminent,  the  Giant  Sequoia 
towers  above  them  all. 


In  October,  1899,  war  was  declared  by  Great 
Britain  against  the  two  Dutch  republics  of  South 
Africa,  the  Transvaal  and  the  Orange  Free  State. 
For  this  act  no  moral  justification  can  be  urged. 
One  must,  of  course,  freely  admit  that  President 
Kruger  of  the  Transvaal,  popularly  known  as 
"Oom  (Uncle)  Paul,"  was  arbitrary  as  well  as  an- 
noyingly  obstinate  in  his  dealings  with  British 
gold-seekers.  On  the  other  hand,  there  is  no  doubt 
that  he  had  large  reason  to  fear  for  the  integrity 
of  his  country  should  they  be  admitted  to  Johan- 
nesburg and  the  mines  on  terms  of  political  equality; 
the  lawless  "Jameson  raid"  of  1896  gave  a  fore- 
taste of  their  disposition. 

In  my  judgment,  all  honest  differences  could  have  Britain's 
been  composed  had  the  intruders  really  wanted  a 
just  settlement.  Their  haste  in  pushing  toward 
direct  action,  regardless  of  the  successful  efforts  at 
mediation  on  the  part  of  President  Steyn  of  the 
Orange  Free  State,  threw  on  them  the  moral  re- 
sponsibility for  the  monstrous  catastrophe  which 
followed  and  raged  almost  three  years. 


The  Days  of  a  Man 


D899 


Imperial 


So  far  as  Great  Britain  is  concerned,  Sir  Alfred 
(now  Lord)  Milner  and  Joseph  Chamberlain  seem 
to  have  been  mainly  the  active  agents  in  bringing 
on  war.  Presumable  motives  were  the  Tory  desire 
expansion  for  expansion  of  empire,  and  the  hope  of  warding 
off  political  disaster  at  home  by  military  operations 
abroad.  Few  wars,  indeed,  are  begun  without  a 
sordid  basis  —  profit,  domination,  or  fear  of  the  loss 
of  power.  As  was  said  by  some  in  England  at  the 
time,  "people  do  not  go  to  war  as  children  cut  off 
poppy  heads,  to  see  the  white  juice  flow."  The 
conflict  was  costly,  bloody,  and  prolonged  —  es- 
pecially inimical,  therefore,  to  British  prestige. 
For,  in  spite  of  small  numbers,  poverty,  and  isola- 
tion, the  Dutch  farmers  held  their  own  in  the  field, 
and  victory,  following  nominal  annexation,  was 
finally  achieved  by  Great  Britain  only  at  great  ex- 
pense of  life  and  money. 

An  interesting  feature  of  the  situation  preceding 
the  war  was  the  apparent  desire  of  the  German 
Kaiser  —  always  carrying  water  on  both  shoulders 
—  to  get  into  the  game  without  actually  fighting. 
In  a  personal  telegram  to  Kruger  (as  is  well  known) 
he  expressed  his  warm  sympathy,  even  going  so 
far  as  to  arouse  the  expectation  of  military  in- 
tervention by  the  Germans.  And  in  London  I  was 
told  that  when  some  one  asked  Marschall  von 
Bieberstein,  former  Prime  Minister  of  Germany, 
why  he  let  such  an  ill-judged  telegram  go  out,  that 
official  replied:  "You  ought  to  have  seen  it  before 
I  edited  it!" 

From  the  first,  world  opinion  was  adverse  to  the 
British  cause,  though  no  formal  protest  came  from 
any  quarter.  My  own  reaction  was  that  vividly 
£6563 


The 

Kaiser's 

telegram 


18993  The  British  Empire 

expressed  in  Joaquin  Miller's  poem  beginning  with 
the  lines: 

We  wish  you  well  in  all  things  well. 

To  me  as  to  Joaquin,  both  of  us  lifelong  admirers  A  gross 
of  England  at  her  best,  the  Boer  War  seemed  a  lapse 
gross  lapse,  a  view  which  few  public  men  of  today 
will  question.  At  the  time,  however,  it  was  loudly 
asserted  that  "the  sense  of  greatness  makes  a  people 
great";  in  other  words,  expansion  of  empire  inflates 
the  individual!  But  it  is  a  plain  fact  that  a  man's 
political  efficiency  depends  directly  on  his  personal 
stake  in  government.  The  real  basis  of  imperialism 
is  the  suppression  of  the  individual  both  at  the  center 
of  power  and  in  its  periphery. 

England  is  snug  and  solid,  and  her  self-governing 
colonies  are  sufficient  unto  themselves.  Thus  the 
British  Empire,  in  so  far  as  it  rests  on  love  of  do- 
minion and  volume  of  trade,  is  vulnerable  and 
temporary,  and  its  "far-flung"  segments  can  be 
permanently  held  together  only  by  the  cement  of 
cooperative  federation;  however  great  also  the  why 
British  genius  for  colonial  control,  the  fact  remains  freedom 

,  i        •  i  i  i  i          matters 

that  no  people  is  good  enough  to  rule  another 
against  its  will."  Nevertheless,  just  settlements  of 
ancient  wrongs  are  not  to  be  reached  in  a  day,  nor 
(as  a  rule)  by  spasms  of  revolution.  "The  mills 
of  the  gods  grind  slowly"  when  they  yield  a  grist 
worth  while.  It  should  also  be  remembered  that 
political  independence  gives  no  guarantee  of  per- 
sonal freedom,  the  only  liberty  worth  considering. 
However,  it  is,  or  ought  to  be,  an  axiom  of  politi- 
cal science  that  good  government  begins  at  home, 
because  justice  and  efficiency  necessarily  decrease 


The  Days  of  a  Man  £1899 

as  the  square  of  the  distance  increases.  For  which 
reason,  imperialism,  benevolent  or  otherwise,  can 
be  only  a  temporary  device  at  the  best,  involving 
dangers  to  the  ruling  nation  as  well  as  to  the  people 
ruled. 

Mob  and  During  the  Boer  War,  hysteria  and  intolerance 
herd  raged  in  Britain  to  a  degree- almost  incredible,  those 
who  dared  to  favor  moderation  or  conciliation  being 
virtually  ostracized.  Threats  of  violence  were  com- 
mon and  physical  attacks  not  infrequent.  Even 
David  Lloyd  George  had  once  to  flee  for  his  life, 
disguised  as  a  policeman.1  The  general  situation 
at  that  time  is  realistically  portrayed  in  "The  Mob" 
by  John  Galsworthy.  This  forceful  drama  deals 
with  the  fate  of  a  statesman  who  stands  out  against 
precipitate  war.  Meanwhile  his  constituents  first, 

1  Referring  backward  to  the  Boer  War,  Matk  Twain,  through  the  lips  of  his 
"Mysterious  Stranger,"  expressed  himself  as  follows:  "There  never  has  been 
a  just  one  [war],  never  an  honorable  one  —  on  the  part  of  the  instigator  of  the 
war.  I  can  see  a  million  years  ahead,  and  this  rule  will  never  change  in  so  many 
as  half  a  dozen  instances.  The  loud  little  handful  —  as  usual  —  will  shout  for 
war.  The  pulpit  will  —  warily  and  cautiously  —  object  —  at  first;  the  great, 
big,  dull  bulk  of  the  nation  will  rub  its  sleepy  eyes  and  try  to  make  out  why 
there  should  be  a  war,  and  will  say,  earnestly  and  indignantly,  'It  is  unjust  and 
dishonorable,  and  there  is  no  necessity  for  it.'  Then  the  handful  will  shout 
louder.  A  few  fair  men  on  the  other  side  will  argue  and  reason  against  the  war 
with  speech  and  pen,  and  at  first  will  have  a  hearing  and  will  be  applauded; 
but  it  will  not  last  long;  those  others  will  outshout  them,  and  presently  the 
anti-war  audiences  will  thin  out  and  lose  popularity.  Before  long  you  will  see 
this  curious  thing:  the  speakers  stoned  from  the  platform,  and  free  speech 
strangled  by  hordes  of  furious  men  who  in  their  secret  hearts  are  still  at  one  with 
those  stoned  speakers  —  as  earlier  —  but  do  not  dare  to  say  so.  And  now, 
the  whole  nation  —  pulpit  and  all  —  will  take  up  the  war-cry,  and  shout  itself 
hoarse,  and  mob  any  honest  man  who  ventures  to  open  his  mouth;  and  presently 
such  mouths  will  cease  to  open.  Next  the  statesmen  will  invent  cheap  lies,  put- 
ting the  blame  upon  the  nation  that  is  attacked,  and  every  man  will  be  glad  of 
these;  and  he  will  by  and  by  convince  himself  that  the  war  is  just,  and  will 
thank  God  for  the  better  sleep  he  enjoys  after  this  process  of  grotesque  self- 
deception." 

C6S8  a 


man 


1899].       Salvation  of  South  Africa 

then  his  colleagues,  later  his  friends  and  even  his 
family  fall  away,  until  finally  he  is  done  to  death  by 
the  patriotic  mob.  The  height  of  irony  is  reached 
in  a  final  tableau  in  which  his  family  and  the  people 
at  large  are  shown  rendering  homage  to  his  statue  in 
a  public  square! 

The  war  over,  reaction  followed  quickly  and  the 
Conservative  politicians  held  responsible  for  its 
inauguration  were  thrown  out  of  power.  South 
Africa  was  then  saved  to  the  Empire  by  Sir  Henry 
Campbell-Bannerman,  the  liberal  premier  who  fol- 
lowed.  Receiving  the  whole  population  (of  whom 
the  Boers  formed  a  large  majority)  into  full  citizen- 
ship, the  government  turned  over  to  them  the  con- 
trol of  their  own  affairs.  Campbell-Bannerman's 
enlightened  policy  thus  fixed  the  loyalty  of  South 
Africa  during  the  Great  War.  Moreover,  in  the  con- 
fusion following  the  Armistice,  no  British  statesman  Smuts 
showed  to  better  advantage  than  the  former  Boer 
leader  General  Jan  Smuts. 


The  principal  local  event  of  the  autumn  of  this 
year  was  the  inauguration  of  Dr.  Benjamin  Ide 
Wheeler,  an  accomplished  scholar,  late  professor  ue 
of  Greek  at  Cornell,  as  president  of  the  University 
of  California  in  succession  to  Dr.  Martin  Kellogg, 
who  had  resigned  not  long  before.  Having  been 
asked  to  give  the  address  of  welcome  at  the  cere- 
mony, I  took  as  my  topic  "the  place  of  the  president 
in  the  American  university  system."  His  essential 
function,  I  asserted,  was  to  assume  the  initiative 
in  academic  matters  and  to  give  to  the  institution 


The  Days  of  a  Man  £1899 

color  and  personality.  In  his  response,  Dr.  Wheeler 
thanked  me  for  a  willingness  to  come  to  Berkeley 
every  time  they  inaugurated  a  new  president! 
"Eating  In  those  days  San  Francisco's  famous  hospitality 
°br'ou  7  partly  expressed  itself  in  a  succession  of  dinners. 
On  these  occasions  both  Wheeler  and  I  were  usually 
among  the  guests,  and,  seated  at  equal  distance 
from  the  toastmaster,  were  called  on  in  turn  for 
an  after-dinner  speech,  acquiring  thereby  a  certain 
degree  of  skill  and  a  parallel  distaste  for  the  opera- 
tion. With  this  experience  in  mind,  my  colleague 
a  few  years  ago  warned  Dr.  Wilbur,  the  new  presi- 
dent of  Stanford,  that  he  would  "have  to  eat  his 
way  through." 

Wheeler  had  a  large  fitness  for  organization  and 
a  taste  for  public  affairs.  During  his  long  adminis- 
tration the  institution  made  great  strides  in  use- 
fulness, in  prestige,  and  in  numbers;  and  Stanford's 
friendly  rivalry,  instead  of  weakening,  proved  a 
growing  source  of  strength.  As  a  result,  as  I  have 
frequently  asserted,  the  pressure  of  education  to 
the  square  inch  is  greater  in  California  than  any- 
where else  on  earth !  Upon  his  retirement  as  emeri- 
tus at  the  end  of  twenty  years,  Wheeler  was  suc- 
President  cceded  by  Dr.  David  Prescott  Barrows,  formerly 
Barrows  dean  Qf  ^  facuitjes  an(]  professor  of  Political 

Science.  Barrows  is  a  man  of  genial  personality, 
with  large  practical  experience  as  head  of  the  De- 
partment of  Public  Instruction  in  the  Philippines, 
and  later,  during  the  Great  War,  in  various  lines 
of  foreign  service. 

The  year  1899,  as  I  have  already  indicated,  was 
one  of  the  most  important  in  the  history  of  Stan- 
£6603 


1899]  The  Last  Lean  Year 

ford  University.  For  the  great  burden  of  debt  and 
uncertainty  had  then  been  finally  lifted,  and  the 
institution  was  at  last  able  to  look  hopefully  forward 
to  a  strong  and  symmetrical  academic  development. 
In  the  six  years  of  struggle,  we  had  accomplished 
not  what  we  had  dreamed  of  as  the  ideal  mission 
of  Stanford,  but  simply  the  best  possible,  every- 
thing considered.  Yet  I  may  truthfully  say,  in 
honor  of  my  colleagues,  that  some  of  the  finest 
work  in  higher  education  anywhere  dates  from 
those  six  lean  years;  moreover,  community  of  ef- 
fort and  a  common  anxiety  had  bound  us  very 
closely  together. 


C66i  3 


APPENDIXES 


ORDAH 


BACON 


_Dv 


RE 


AWLEY  Or  HoLI.V 


f 


BARNES 


CLOSE 


LAKE 


I     JACKSON 
BEARDSLEY 


WALDO 


L     COGSWELL 


ADAMS 


1      GRAVES 


GRAY 


^MlLES  j 


DlMMOCK 


HAMMOND 

BURSLE 


HULL 


DERKIN 


DRAKE 


ROGERS 


FOWLER 


TAPP 


W 


S  POWELL 


I    GODFREY 


ALLEN 


OSTER 


SHEFFIELD 


t      BULLARD 


M. 


PIERCE 


DURKBB 


JORDAN,   1700 

BACON,   1676 
HOLLY,   1636 

LAH,  1745 

BEARDSLEY,  1635 
WALDO,   1650 
COGSWELL,  1635 
ADAMS,   1632 
GRAVES,   1608 
GRAY,   1639 

DIM  MOCK,   1640 

BURSLBY,     1630 

HULL,   1630 
ELDBRKIN,   1637 

DRAKE,  1630 

__________  FOWLER,  1637 

TAPP,   1639 

.^________  WIGHT,   1635 

I    CHENEY      CHENEY,   1635 
GARY,  1630 
GODFREY,   1638 
ALLEN,   1630 
FOSTER,   1638 
DANE,   1636 
SHEFFIELD,  1638 
BULLARD,   1630 
MORSB,   1636 
PIERCE,   1637 

DURKBE,    1663 


BAKER 


GOULD 


HONEY 


CROSS 


1637 


THE  JOBDAN-WALDO-HOLLY  LINE  IN  NEW  ENGLAND 
As  worked  out  by  Edward  J.  Edwards  and  Sarah  Louise  Kimball 


APPENDIXES 

A 
COLONIAL  GENEALOGY 

I.    THE  JORDAN-WALDO-HOLLY  LINE    IN  NEW  ENGLAND 

BELOW  will  be  found,  with  a  few  exceptions,  (a)  the  name, 
(b)  the  chief  place  of  residence  in  New  England  of  each 
of  my  immigrant  ancestors  recorded  on  the  chart  on  the 
opposite  page,  (c)  his  principal  home  in  the  mother 
country,  and  (d)  the  date  or  approximate  date  of  his 
arrival  in  America.  Concerning  the  first  two,  however, 
my  information  is  incomplete  and  only  circumstantial: 

Rufus  Jordan,  probably  of  Boston,  from  Jordan,  near  Ash- 
burton  (parish  of  Widecombe-in-the-Moor),  Devon,  about 
1700 

General  Nathaniel  Bacon,  "rebel  patriot"  of  Virginia,  from 
England,  1676,  supposed  to  be  ancestor  of 

Thaddeus  Bacon,  Hampton,  Mass. 

Samuel  Holly,  Cambridge,  from  London,  1636 

Thomas  Lake,  Stratford,  1745 

William  Beardsley,  from  England,  1635 

Cornelius  Waldo,  Ipswich,  from  Berwick,  Wiltshire,   1640 

John  Cogswell,  Ipswich,  from  Westbury  Leigh,  Wiltshire,  1635 

Henry  Adams,  Braintree,  ancestor  of  John  Adams,  1632 

Admiral  Thomas  Graves,  Charlestown,  from  Stepney,  1608 

Thomas  Gray,  Charlestown,  from  Harwich,  1639 

Edward  Dimmock,  Barnstable,  1640 

John  Bursley,  Dorchester,  1630 

Rev.  Joseph  Hull,  Barnstable,  from  Northleigh,  Devon,  1630 

John  Elderkin,  Norwich,  from  Devon,  1637 

John  Drake,  Windsor,  Connecticut,  from  Wiscombe  Park, 
Devon,  1630 

Lieutenant  William  Fowler,  New  Haven,  from  Islington,  1637 

Edmund  Tapp,  Milford,  1639 

Thomas  Wight,  Dedham,  from  Isle  of  Wight,  1635 

3 


Appendix  A 


William  Cheney,  Roxbury,  from  Meynall  Longley,  Derbyshire, 

1635 

John  Gary,  Plymouth,  from  Bristol,  1630 
Francis  Godfrey,  Duxbury,  about  1638 
Samuel  Allen,  Braintree,  from  Bridgewater,  1630 
Reginald  Foster,  Ipswich,  "from  the  west  of  England,"  1638 
Dr.  John  Dane,  Ipswich  and  Roxbury,  from  Berkhampstead, 

1636 

William  Sheffield,  Dover,  New  Hampshire,  1658 
Robert  Bullard,  Watertown,  from  Kent,  1630 
Joseph  Morse,  Watertown,  from  Ipswich,  England,  1636 
John  Pierce,  Watertown,  from  Norwich,  England,  1637 
William  Durkee,  Ipswich,  from  West  Indies,  1663 
Robert  Cross,  Ipswich,  1637 

Of  these  colonial  ancestors  I  shall  refer  to  a  few  of  the 
more  or  less  typical. 

JOHN  GARY  was  a  belated  Pilgrim  from  Bristol,  who, 
having  missed  the  Mayflower,  reached  Plymouth  in  1630. 
"A  graduate  of  a  French  college,"  "a  man  of  much 
influence  by  reason  of  his  superior  education  and  up- 
right character,"  he  "taught  the  first  Latin  school  in 
the  colony."  John  Gary,  his  son,  a  London  merchant, 
settled  in  Bristol,  where  "he  made  a  great  quantity  of 
ale  which  he  shipped  to  Newport  for  distribution  through- 
out the  colony."  House  and  brewery  gave  the  name  of 
"Malt  Hand  Lane"  to  the  street  on  which  they  were 
located,  and  by  which  it  is  still  known.  "When  the 
church  was  organized,  he  was  elected  one  of  the  deacons 
and  held  that  office  until  his  death."  His  tombstone 
reads: 

Remember  death.     Here  lies  ye  dust  of  Deacon 
John  Gary,  a  shining  pattern  of  piety,  whose 
spirit  returned  to  God  that  gave  it,  July  I4th, 
1721,  in  ye  76th  year  of  his  age. 

A  man  of  prayer  so  willing  to  do  good, 
His  highest  worth,  who  of  us  understood? 
Fear  God,  love  Christ,  help  souls  their 

work  to  mend, 
So  like  this  saint,  fit  for  bliss  without  end. 

C6663 


Colonial  Genealogy 


THOMAS  DIMMOCK,  son  of  EDWARD,  was  chief  justice  of 
the  first  court  in  Barnstable,  of  which  town  he  was  one  of 
the  two  founders. 

Few  of  the  first  settlers  lived  a  purer  life  than  Elder  Dim- 
mock.  He  came  over  not  to  amass  wealth  or  acquire  honor, 
but  that  he  might  worship  his  God  according  to  the  dictates 
of  his  own  conscience,  and  that  he  and  his  posterity  might  here 
enjoy  the  blessings  of  civil  and  religious  liberty.  ...  If  his 
neighbor  was  an  Anabaptist  or  a  Quaker,  he  did  not  judge  him, 
because  he  held  that  to  be  a  prerogative  of  Deity,  which  no 
man  had  the  right  to  assume. 

In  dictating  his  will  (1658)  he  said  "that  what  little 
he  had  he  would  give  to  his  wife  (Ann  Hammond),  for 
the  children  were  hers  as  well  as  his."  His  granddaughter, 
Thankful  Dimmock,  married  Edward  Waldo,  ancestor  of 
Ralph  Waldo  Emerson. 

Captain  Shubael  Dimmock  of  Barnstable,  son  of 
Thomas,  seems  to  have  been  a  man  of  parts  who  "sus- 
tained the  character  and  reputation  of  his  father."  He 
occupied  various  positions  of  trust,  and  died,  much  be- 
loved, in  Mansfield,  Connecticut,  "October  29,  J732,  at 
nine  o'clock,  in  the  ninety-first  year  of  his  age." 

So  say  the  "Annals  of  Dorchester."  In  Cotton 
Mather's  famous  "Magnalia  Christi,"  however,  the 
Captain  made  a  much  earlier  and  more  dramatic  exit 
from  life,  being  slain  in  a  skirmish  of  King  William's 
War.  According  to  Mather,  Captain  Shubael  was  in 
1697  a  member  of  a  defensive  expedition  to  Casco  Bay. 
At  Damariscotta  River  the  party  met  a  band  of  Indians 

who  entertained  them  with  a  volley  and  huzzah  !  None 
of  ours  were  hurt  but  Major  March  repaid  'em  in  their 
own  leaden  coin.  .  .  .  Our  army  thu§  beat  'em  off  with 
the  loss  of  about  a  dozen  men,  whereof  one  was  the  worthy 
Captain  Dymmock  of  Barnstable.  .  .  .  But  there  was  a 
singular  providence  of  our  Lord  Jesus  Christ  in  the  whole 
of  this  matter.  For  by  the  seasonable  arrival  and  encounter 
of  our  army  a  horrible  descent  of  Indians  which  might  deso- 

£667:1 


Appendix  A 


late  whole  plantations  was  most  happily  averted  and  at  the 
same  time  the  signal  hand  of  heaven  gave  defeat  unto  the 
purposes  of  the  French  Squadron  at  sea,  so  that  they  had 
something  else  to  do  than  to  visit  the  coast  of  New  England. 

Rev.  JOSEPH  HULL,  Oxonian,  associate  and  friend  of 
Dimmock,  who  from  "religious  scruples"  had  resigned  a 
living  at  Northleigh  in  Devon,  was  also  a  founder  of 
Barnstable,  though  once  dismissed  from  his  local  church 
because  of  "unexcused  absence  from  communion,"  he 
having,  in  fact,  gone  to  preach  at  Yarmouth,  five  miles 
away!  He  was  soon  reinstated,  however;  but  a  large 
influx  of  people  arriving  from  Devon  (1639)  with  their 
own  pastor,  "Mr.  Lothrop,"  a  popular  and  tolerant  man, 
the  majority  preferred  the  latter,  "with  whom  they  had 
suffered  persecution  in  England."  Up  to  that  time,  Hull 
had  been  "the  leading  man  in  the  town,  general  manager 
of  its  affairs,  deputy  to  the  Colony  Court,  and  pastor  to 
the  church  and  congregation,"  — 

The  founder  of  a  civil  community,  and  however  small  or 
weak  it  may  have  been,  and  though  no  Homer  or  Virgil  has 
sung  his  praises,  yet  he  may  honestly  and  truly  have  said: 
"I  was  the  instrument  in  the  hands  of  God  to  build  up  this 
little  community  and  to  convert  the  savage  Indians  from  enmity 
to  friendship." 

But  because  of  the  church  quarrel,  "within  one  short 
year  he  fell  from  his  high  position,  he  was  excluded  from 
office,"  lost  his  influence,  and  many  of  his  early  friends. 
Chagrined  at  "the  ungenerous  treatment  he  thought  he 
had  received,"  he  removed  to  Yarmouth,  where  he  or- 
ganized an  "irregular"  church  composed  of  his  Barn- 
stable  friends  and  of  critics  of  "the  settled  minister," 
Marmaduke  Matthews,  "witty  and  learned,  but  not  dis- 
tinguished for  depth  of  thought  or  sound  judgment." 

Among  Hull's  stanch  supporters  was  one  Dr.  Thomas 
Starr,  not  however  an  ancestor  of  the  apostle  of  religious 
freedom,  Thomas  Starr  King.  All  these  men  were  now 

668 


Colonial  Genealogy 


attacked  as  "scoffers,  jeerers  of  religion,  and  as  disturbers 
of  the  proceedings  of  a  town  meeting";  the  Barnstable 
church,  moreover,  "hurled  letters  of  excommunication 
against  Hull  and  his  followers,"  but  without  effect. 
They  then  appealed  to  the  civil  authorities,  and  a  war- 
rant was  issued  for  Hull's  arrest  "for  the  crime  of  preach- 
ing at  Yarmouth,  he  being  an  excommunicated  person!" 
In  this  juncture,  although  not  daunted  by  the  spiritual 
weapons  employed,  "as  a  good  citizen,  he  felt  bound  not 
to  resist  the  civil  authority."  He  therefore  abandoned 
the  fight,  and  left  Yarmouth  for  Dover,  then  near  the 
extreme  edge  of  settlement.  But  trouble  still  pursued, 
and  his  presence  in  Dover  "gave  great  offense  to  the 
Governor  £Winthrop]  and  the  other  delegates  of  the 
United  Colonies  of  New  England,  who  held  their  first 
meeting  in  Boston  in  May,  1643." 

Furthermore,  because  "the  little  town  of  Dover  had 
elected  a  mechanic  to  be  its  mayor  and  called  Mr.  Hull 
to  be  its  minister,"  the  Colony,  then  known  as  "Georgi- 
ana"  (the  patent  of  Sir  Fernando  Gorges,  including  terri- 
tory now  in  New  Hampshire  and  Maine),  was  denied  by 
the  Governor  and  his  Council  the  right  of  membership 
in  the  United  Colonies.  Had  it  been  admitted,  "other 
counsels  might  have  prevailed  and  perhaps  some  of  the 
long,  bloody,  and  cruel  wars  between  the  English  on  one 
side  and  the  French  and  Indians  on  the  other  might  have 
been  avoided." 

That  Hull  was  never  really  "a  contentious  man,"  nor 
even  opinionated  or  selfish,  seems  to  be  true,  for  state- 
ments by  Lothrop  and  Cotton  Mather  are  said  to  have 
fully  vindicated  him.  Indeed,  "every  recorded  act  of  his 
life  exhibits  him  as  a  man  of  peace,  of  a  quiet  and  yield- 
ing disposition,  as  a  sincere  man,  and  a  good  Christian." 

Nevertheless,  I  find  that  once  when  his  pulpit  at  Dover 
was  invaded  by  a  Quakeress,  it  was  charged  that  "old 
Mr.  Hull,  in  leading  Mary  out,  pinched  her  arm,"  though 
later  that  day  he  "allowed  the  Quakeresses  to  do  as  their 

C6693 


Appendix  A 


spirit  moved."  Finally,  "to  avoid  all  contests  he  crossed 
to  the  Isles  of  Shoals."  There,  "in  those  desolate  islands 
where  rocks  and  sterility  contend  for  the  mastery,  where 
a  single  spring  furnishes  the  water,  and  the  people  break- 
fast, dine,  and  sup  on  fish,  there  being  nothing  to  tempt 
intrusion,  poor  Mr.  Hull  spent  the  remainder  of  his  days 
and  died  in  peace/' 

THOMAS  WIGHT  founded  in  Dedham  in  1644  the  first 
free,  tax-supported  school  of  Massachusetts;  "taking 
into  consideration  the  great  necessitie  of  providing  some 
meanes  for  the  education  of  youth  in  ye  said  towne  (the 
people)  did  with  unanimous  consent  declare  by  voate 
their  willingness  to  promote  that  worke,  promising  to 
put  too  their  hands  to  provide  maintenance  for  a  free 
school  in  our  said  towne/'  Wight  also  assisted  in  the 
erection  of  an  Indian  village  at  Natick,  and  was  founder 
of  the  town  of  Medfield.  Moreover,  he  and  his  sons  took 
an  active  interest  in  the  building  of  "the  new  brick  col- 
lege at  Cambridge"  (Harvard),  to  which  Wight  pledged 
himself  to  give  each  year  "4  bushelles  of  Endian  Corne." 

THOMAS  GRAVES,  a  sea-captain  by  profession,  a  very 
active  and  brave  man,  owner  of  "the  first  vessel  ever  built 
in  Boston  for  foreign  trade,"  was  made  Rear  Admiral  in 
the  British  Navy  for  "good  service  in  the  English  Chan- 
nel." His  daughter  Rebecca  married  Captain  Samuel 
Adams,  son  of  Henry  Adams  of  Braintree,  ancestor  of 
President  John  Adams;  and  their  daughter,  Rebecca 
Adams,  married  John  Waldo,  one  of  Emerson's  ancestors. 

JOHN  COGSWELL  sailed  from  Bristol  in  1635  on  the 
Angel  Gabriel,  a  craft  of  "240  tunne,"  "a  strong  ship  and 
furnished  with  14  or  16  pieces  of  ordnance."  Richard 
Mather,  who  came  in  a  sister  ship,  the  James,  thus  records 
the  fate  of  the  former: 

Ye  Angel  Gabriel  being  yn  at  ancre  at  Pemmagind,  was 
burst  in  pieces  and  cast  away  in  ye  storme,  and  most  of  ye 
cattell  and  other  goodes,  with  one  seaman  and  three  or  four 
passengers,  did  also  perish  therein,  besides  two  of  ye  pas- 

n  670  3 


Colonial  Genealogy 


sengers  yt  [that]  dyed  by  ye  way.  Ye  rest  having  yr  lives 
given  yne  for  a  prey.  But  ye  James  and  wee  yt  were  therein 
with  cattell  and  goodes  were  all  preserved  alive.  The  Lord's 
name  be  blessed  forever! 

Cogswell's  daughter  Hannah  married  Deacon  COR- 
NELIUS WALDO  of  Ipswich,  a  native  of  Berwick,  Wilt- 
shire. Cornelius  was  a  descendant  of  Thomas  Waldo, 
brother  of  Peter,  the  religious  reformer  who  died  in  1179. 
To  WILLIAM  SPOWELL  of  Boston  was  assigned  the  duty 
"to  see  that  all  ye  hogs  were  yoked  and  ringed,"  and 
later  he  was  paid  "for  looking  at  ye  boyes  in  ye  meeting 
house."  SAMUEL  ALLEN  was  a  partner  of  Miles  Standish. 

JOSEPH  MORSE  is  described  as  a  public-spirited  citizen: 

Also  from  the  uncommon  education  in  his  family,  and  the 
references  in  his  will  to  copies  of  precious  religious  books,  it  is 
inferred  that  he  was  a  person  of  standing  and  piety,  and  that 
by  his  prayers  and  godly  examples,  as  well  as  by  his  sacri- 
fices and  enterprizes,  he  has  imposed  obligations  on  his  race 
which  it  is  hoped  they  will  acknowledge  by  a  'monument  to 
his  memory. 

Sergeant  WILLIAM  FOSTER  of  Canterbury,  Connecticut, 
was  "specially  zealous  in  defending  the  Church  against 
minesterial  usurpation."  In  fact,  he  openly  declared 
that  the  minister  (Mr.  Moseley)  "had  lied"  and  that  he 
"could  prove  it"  -also  that  he  "saw  the  pope's  horns 
begin  to  bud  some  years  ago  and  now  they  were  growing 
out."  In  April,  1775,  Foster  was  one  of  those  "who 
marched  from  Connecticut  towns  to  the  relief  of  Boston 
in  the  Lexington  Alarm,"  when  Paul  Revere  made  his 
noted  midnight  ride. 

Captain  JOHN  HOLLY,  a  judge  in  New  Haven,  grand- 
son of  Samuel  Holly  of  Cambridge,  spent  his  life  in  the 
public  service.  His  son,  another  Samuel  Holly,1  estab- 

1  As  already  explained  (Chapter  I,  page  5),  in  or  about  the  year  1815  some  of 
the  great-great-grandchildren  of  this  Samuel  Holly  —  namely,  the  sons  of  (the 
Reverend)  Sylvanus  Holly,  Jr.,  and  Huldah  Lake,  Sylvanus'  first  wife,  my 
great-grandmother  —  changed  the  surname  to  Hawley. 

£671  3 


Appendix  A 


lished  in  Stamford  in  1702  a  private  school  which  was 
accepted  in  town  meeting  in  the  following  language: 

Ye  town  doth  say  that  they  doth  accept  ye  present  scoole 
kept  by  ye  person  to  teach  to  reade  English  and  to  write  and 
to  arrithmetick,  is  a  scoole  according  to  lawe. 

Lieutenant  WILLIAM  FOWLER,  one  of  the  Puritan 
prisoners  in  the  Bridewell  in  1592,  who  came  to  New 
Haven  in  1637,  was  among  the  few  colonists  having  a 
classical  education,  becoming  the  first  magistrate  of  New 
Haven,  and  one  of  the  "seven  pillars  of  the  church." 
His  son,  Captain  William  Fowler,  was  also  active  in 
colonial  affairs. 

JOHN  ELDERKIN  was  a  "builder  of  corn-mills  and 
churches,"  erecting  one  of  each  at  Lynn,  Dedham, 
Reading,  Providence,  New  London,  Norwich,  and  Kil- 
lingworth.  JOHN  ELDERKIN  WALDO  of  Canterbury,  Con- 
necticut, was  a  prominent  attorney  and  judge,  an  un- 
compromising Federalist  in  his  day.1 

THOMAS  LAKE  was  the  only  one  of  all  these  colonial 
worthies  who  adhered  to  the  Church  of  England,  he 
having  been  "a  pew  holder  in  the  Episcopal  Church  in 
Stratford  in  1745";  and  later  (1747)  his  son  Joseph 
"consented  to  articles  of  faith  on  the  organization  of  the 
North  Stratford  Church." 

Several  of  my  ancestors  took  part  in  the  War  of  the 
Revolution.  These  were: 

John  Jordan,  born  at  Litchfield,  Connecticut,  1750,  afterward 
of  South  Brimfield,  Massachusetts,  and  Moriah,  New  York ; 
also  fought  in  the  War  of  1812; 

Captain  William  Fowler  of  New  Haven; 

Sergeant  William  Foster  of  Canterbury; 

Joseph  Lake  of  Stratford  and  Sharon. 

To  these  people  as  a  whole  the  fine  words  of  Starr 
King  are  truly  applicable: 

When  they  found  that  all  which  civilization  had  done  for 
1  See  Chapter  I,  page  5. 


Colonial  Genealogy 


the  old  world  did  not  nourish,  but  threatened  to  crush  their 
manliness,  they  came  to  the  wilderness  to  show,  on  a  back- 
ground of  ice,  granite,  and  famine,  that  humble  devotion  to 
duty,  reverence  for  the  right,  and  the  vigorous  will,  will  make 
men  masters  of  the  world,  and  compel  the  storm  winds,  the 
bleak  shore,  and  the  untamed  forests  to  welcome  and  cherish 
their  spirits  and  ideas. 

Historically,  as  Dr.  Charles  W.  Wendte  has  shown, 
the  Puritans  were  the  ancestors  of  one  third  the  popu- 
lation of  the  United  States  a  century  later,  and  of  nearly 
one  fifth  today.  From  1630  to  1635,  21,200  persons 
(4000  families)  came  over  from  England  —  "largely 
country  squires  and  yeomen,  thrifty,  industrious,  deco- 
rous, liberty-loving,  and  religious."  To  this  day  their 
influence  and  institutions  predominate  in  the  civic,  edu- 
cational, and  religious  life  of  the  American  community. 


Studies  of  Puritan  ancestry  in  New  England  show 
clearly  the  effects  of  the  law  of  primogeniture  upon  the 
English  people.  The  eldest  sons  of  "good  families"  or  of 
the  nobility  naturally  developed  into  Royalists  and 
Cavaliers;  younger  sons  and  daughters'  sons,  left  without 
inheritance,  became  as  easily  Roundheads,  Dissenters, 
and  Puritans.  The  legend  on  one  of  Cromwell's  battle 
flags  asked:  "Why  should  the  elder  son  have  everything 
and  we  nothing?"  To  put  it  another  way,  why  should 
"blue  blood"  be  supposed  to  flow  in  the  veins  of  the 
first  born  only? 

Fortunately,  those  exposed  to  the  deteriorating  influ- 
ences of  ease  and  unearned  power  were  few  in  number, 
a  conspicuous  minority.  The  others  became  part  of  the 
mass  of  commoners  who  have  made  England  great. 
Samuel  Johnson  once  cynically  observed  that  primo- 
geniture is  an  excellent  thing,  as  "it  ensures  that  there 
shall  be  but  one  fool  in  the  family!"  Happily  it  also 

C673  3 


Appendix  A 


provides  that  the  high  qualities  which  once  set  noble- 
man apart  from  peasant  shall  be  spread  through  the 
whole  body  of  the  people  by  means  of  a  constant  trans- 
fusion from  the  "first  estate"  to  the  third.  The  lack  of 
such  a  system  left  France,  especially,  to  be  overrun  by 
a  hungry  and  impecunious  nobility. 

Records  gathered  by  Mr.  Edwards,  supplemented  by 
a  series  of  unpublished  charts  prepared  for  me  by  Miss 
Kimball,  a  well-informed  genealogist,  show  plainly  the 
method  by  which  the  diffusion  takes  place.  The  daughter 
of  a  king,  for  example,  marries  a  nobleman;  one  of  her 
descendants  takes  a  squire  or  younger  son;  a  daughter 
of  the  squire  marries  a  yeoman,  whose  children  are  thus 
of  kingly  descent.  And  every  New  England  farmer  of 
Puritan  lineage  may  boast  of  as  much  of  the  germ  plasm 
of  William,  Alfred,  or  Charlemagne  as  any  royal  house- 
hold in  Europe;  reversedly,  plebeian  blood  may  be  mingled 
with  the  "bluest,"  usually  to  the  betterment  of  both. 
As  a  matter  of  fact,  indeed,  very  few  Englishmen  or 
Americans  of  English  origin  are  without  royal  blood;  nor 
is  it  likely  that  the  coat  of  arms  of  any  king  living  does 
not  conceal  the  bar  sinister  of  the  peasant.1 

Moreover,  Miss  Kimball's  studies  show  that  some 
hundreds  of  well-known  Americans  may  trace  their 
ancestry  to  Isabel  de  Vermandois,  a  descendant  of  Charle- 
magne, who  married  successively  Robert  de  Bellomont 
and  William  de  Warren.  Doubtless  millions  of  others 
could  uncover  for  themselves  the  same  lineage  should 
they  take  the  trouble.  Nevertheless,  my  assertion  of 
royal  descent  for  the  average  New  England  farmer  was 
questioned  by  G.  G.  Coulson,  a  Cambridge  don,  who 
declared  it  "absurd."  Upon  my  having  argued  the  case, 
adding  that  many  other  absurd  things  are  also  true,  he 
finally  admitted  that  it  might  be  the  fact  with  those 
descended  from  "good  families  of  the  County"! 

1  This  whole  subject  was  treated  somewhat  fully  by  me  in  "The  Heredity 
of  Richard  Roe,"  1911. 

C674H 


Colonial  Genealogy 


In  this  connection  it  should  be  noted  that  as  each  in- 
dividual has  had  two  parents,  four  grandparents,  eight 
great-grandparents,  and  so  back  endlessly  in  geometrical 
progression,  every  one  of  Isabel's  adult  twentieth-century 
descendants  would,  if  the  facts  permitted,  count  not  less 
than  134,192,256  separate  ancestors  at  the  beginning  of 
her  era,  the  twelfth  century.  Furthermore,  as  in  such  a 
progression  the  sum  of  the  series  is  equivalent  (minus 
one)  to  its  highest  term,  each  descendant  should  have 
134,192,255  intervening  forebears,  making  268,384,511  in 
all.  Again,  each  child  of  this  generation  has  twice  as 
many  ancestors  as  either  parent  —  that  is,  536,769,022 
in  all,  of  which  incalculable  number  not  one  would  have 
died  in  infancy,  or  without  issue.  This,  however,  has 
led  us  to  figures  manifestly  impossible  in  view  of  the  fact 
that  the  total  population  of  England  in  noo  did  not 
exceed  two  millions,  and  that  probably  not  one  tenth  of 
these,  beset  as  they  were  by  war  and  pestilence,  left  per- 
manent descendants. 

The  simple  explanation  is,  of  course,  that  each  fore- 
bear must  be  counted  over  and  over  thousands  or  mil- 
lions of  times  in  each  individual  case.  Indeed,  no  one 
can  guess  how  many  tangled  lines  lead  down  to  him  from 
Isabel,  or  even  from  Edward  I. 

Conversely,  if  every  couple  of  the  twelfth  century,  and 
of  all  succeeding  ones,  left  let  us  say  on  the  average  four 
children,  thus  doubling  their  own  number  with  each 
generation,  Isabel's  descendants  alone,  facts  permitting, 
should  now  number  134,192,256,  as  would  the  descendants 
of  every  other  pair  similarly  fertile,  the  whole  yielding  a 
nominal  total  far  exceeding  the  present  population  of 
the  globe!  Thus  in  this  matter,  also,  intervening  indi- 
viduals must  be  reckoned  over  and  over  again  almost  to 
infinity. 

A  boasted  "line  of  long  descent"  is  therefore  the 
merest  fragment  of  a  man's  genealogy,  and  differs  from 
other  lines  only  in  being  for  a  time  a  shade  more  con- 

C6753 


Appendix  A 


spicuous,  or  because  some  one  has  taken  the  pains  to 
trace  and  record  it.  On  the  other  hand,  the  broad  re- 
semblances called  racial  traits  result  more  or  less  defi- 
nitely from  blood  relationship  due  to  common  descent, 
and  it  is  not  without  reason  that  Miss  Kimball  has  called 
the  English  people  "the  inbred  descendants  of  Charle- 
magne." 

3.    A   FEW   PURITAN   LINES .  LEADING    BACK  TO   ISABEL 
DRAKE-WALDO-JORDAN  ANCESTRY 

William  de  Warrenne,  m.  Gundred,  stepdaughter  of  William  I 
William  de  Warren,  Earl  of  Surrey,  etc.,  second  husband  of  Isa- 
bel de  Vermandois,  noi,  both  descended  from  Charlemagne 
Ada  de  Warren,  m.  Henry  of  Scotland,  Earl  of  Huntingdon 
Margaret  de  Warren,  m.  Humphrey  de  Bohun  IV,  Earl  of 

Hereford  and  Essex 

Henry  de  Bohun,  surety  for  King  John  in  Magna  Charta 
Humphrey  de  Bohun  V,  "the  Good,"  m.  Matilde  Exouden 
Humphrey  de  Bohun  VI,  m.  Eleanor  de  Braose 
Humphrey  de  Bohun  VII,  m.  Maud  de  Fiennes 
Humphrey   de    Bohun   VIII,    m.    Elizabeth    de    Plantagenet, 
Countess  of    Holland,  daughter  of  King  Edward  I  and 
Eleanor  of  Castile 
Lady  Margaret  de  Bohun,  m.  Sir  Hugh  de  Courteney,  Earl  of 

Devon,  who  died  in  1377 

Edward  Courteney,  of  Goderington,  Devon,  m.  Emeline  d'Auney 
Sir  Hugh  Courteney,  of  Haccomb,  m.  Maud  Beaumont,  d.  1468 
Margaret  Courteney,  m.  Sir  Theobald  Grenville 
Sir  William  Grenville,  of  Bideford,  m.  Philippa  Bonville 
Thomas  Grenville,  of  Stowe,  Cornwall,  m.  Elizabeth  Gorges 
Sir  Thomas  Grenville,  of  Stowe,  m.  Elizabeth  Gilbert,  d.  1494 
Sir  Roger  Grenville,  of  Stowe,  m.  Margaret  Whitleigh 
Amy  Grenville,  m.  John  Drake 
Robert  Drake,  of  Wiscombe  Park,  Devon,  m.  Elizabeth  Pri- 

deaux,  d.  1550 
William  Drake,  of  Wiscombe  Park,  m.  Philippa  Denys,  d.  1592 


John   Drake,  of  Windsor,   Connecticut,  born   1584,  came  to 
Boston  1636,  m.  Elizabeth  Rogers,  d.  1659 

n  676 1 


Colonial  Genealogy 


Elizabeth  Drake,  m.  John  Elderkin 

John  Elderkin,  Jr.  of  Reading,  m.  Abigail  Fowler 

Colonel  John  Elderkin,  m.  Susannah  Baker 

Abigail  Elderkin,  m.  Edward  Waldo,  Jr. 

Zachariah  Waldo,  of  Windham,  m.  Elizabeth  Wight 

John  Elderkin  Waldo,  of  Canterbury,  m.  Beulah  Foster 

Anne  Waldo,  m.  David  Hawley 

Huldah  Lake  Hawley,  m.  Hiram  Jordan 

David  Starr  Jordan,  of  Palo  Alto,  m.  Jessie  Knight 

Knight  Starr  Jordan,  m.  lona  Knight 

Lee  Knight  Jordan,  born  1916 

ANCESTRY  OF  DR.  CHARLES  WILLIAM  ELIOT 

Robert  de  Bellomont,  Earl  of  Leicester,  first  husband  of  Isabel 

de  Vermandois 
Robert  de  Bellomont 

Margaret  de  Bellomont,  m.  Saier  de  Quincy,  Earl  of  Winchester 
Roger  de  Quincy 

Margaret  de  Quincy,  m.  William  de  Ferrers,  Earl  of  Derby 
Lord  William  Ferrers 

Joan  de  Ferrers,  m.  Thomas,  Baron  de  Berkeley 
Margaret  de  Berkeley,  m.  Sir  Anselme  Bassett 


Isabel  Bassett,  m. Pynchard 

Symond  Bassett 

Sir  Edmund  Pynchard  Bassett 

Sir  Symond  Bassett 


Giles  Bassett 
Robert  Bassett 
William  Bassett 
Edward  Bassett 


Jane  Bassett,  m.  Dr.  John  Deighton 

Katherine  Deighton  (second  wife),  m.  Thomas  Dudley,  Gov- 
ernor of  Maine,  1634 


Joseph  Dudley 

Mary    Dudley,    m.     Captain 

Joseph  Atkins 
Dudley  Atkins 


Catherine  Atkins,  m.  Samuel 

Eliot 
Samuel  Atkins  Eliot,  m.  Mary 

Lyman 


Charles  William  Eliot 
ANCESTRY  or  OLIVER  WENDELL  HOLMES 

Robert  de  Bellomont,  Earl  of  Leicester  and  Surrey,  first  hus- 
band of  Isabel  de  Vermandois 
Robert  de  Bellomont,  Earl  of  Surrey 
Margaret  de  Bellomont,  m.  Saier  de  Quincy,  Earl  of  Winchester 

C677] 


Appendix  A 


Roger  de  Quincy 

Margaret  de  Quincy,  m.  William  de  Ferrers 

Lord  William  Ferrers,  Earl  of  Derby 

Anne  de  Ferrers,  m.  Baron  John  de  Grey 

Baron  Henry  de  Grey 

Baron  Reginald  de  Grey 

Baron  Reginald  de  Grey 

Baron  Henry  de  Grey 

Margaret  de  Grey,  m.  Baron  John  d'Arcy 

Baron  John  d'Arcy 

Richard  d'Arcy 

Baron  William  d'Arcy 

Joan  d'Arcy,  m.  Sir  Richard  Yorke 

Edmund  Yorke 

Albert  Yorke 

Edmund  Ycrke 

Dorothy  Yorke,  first  wife  of  Thomas  Dudley 

Anne  Dudley,  m.  Governor  Simon  Bradstreet 

Dr.  Samuel  Bradstreet 

Mercy  Bradstreet,  m.  Dr.  James  Oliver 

Sarah  Oliver,  m.  Colonel  Jacob  Wendell 

Judge  Oliver  Wendell 

Sarah  Wendell,  m.  Rev.  Abiel  Holmes 

Dr.  Oliver  Wendell  Holmes,  m.  Amelia  Lee  Jackson 

Justice  Oliver  Wendell  Holmes 

The  ancestry  of  Phillips  Brooks,  as  well  as  of  most  other 
New  Englanders,  unites  with  that  of  Eliot  and  that  of 
Holmes  in  the  marriage  of  Robert  de  Bellomont  and 
Isabel  de  Vermandois. 

ANCESTRY  OF  PHILLIPS  BROOKS 

Robert  de  Bellomont,  m.  Isabel  de  Vermandois 

Elizabeth  de  Bellomont,  m.  Gilbert  de  Clare,  Earl  of  Pembroke 

Richard  de  Clare,  "Strongbow,"  Earl  of  Pembroke 

Isabel  de  Clare,  m.  William  de  Mareschal,  Earl  of  Pembroke 

Eve  de  Mareschal,  m.  William,  Baron  de  Braose 

Maude  Braose,  m.  Sir  Roger  Mortimer 

Sir  Edmund  Mortimer,  Earl  of  March 

Sir  Roger  Mortimer 

C  678  3 


Colonial  Genealogy 


Sir  Roger  Mortimer 

Edmund  Mortimer 

Elizabeth  Mortimer,  m.  Sir  Henry  Percy,  "Hotspur,"  Earl  of 

Northumberland 

Henry  Percy,  Earl  of  Northumberland,  m.  Eleanor  Neville 
Henry  Percy 

Margaret  Percy,  m.  Sir  William  Gascoigne 
Dorothy  Gascoigne,  m.  Sir  Ninian  (?  Vivian)  Markenfield 
Alice  Markenfield,  m.  Robert  Mauleverer 
Dorothy  Mauleverer,  m.  John  Kaye 
Edward  Kaye 
Robert  Kaye 


Grace  Kaye,  m.  Sir  Richard  Saltonstall,  founder  of  Watertown, 

Massachusetts 

Colonel  Nathaniel  Saltonstall 
Gurdon  Saltonstall,  Governor  of  Massachusetts 
Elizabeth  Saltonstall,  m.  Dr.  Roland  Cotton 
Joanna  Cotton,  m.  Rev.  John  Brown 
Abigail  Brown,  m.  Rev.  Edgar  Brooks 
Cotton  Brown  Brooks 
William  Gray  Brooks 
Phillips  Brooks 

My  own  ancestry  and  that  of  Ralph  Waldo  Emerson 
enter  that  of  Phillips  Brooks  through  the  Gascoigne- 
Percy  union  in  England,  from  which  the  New  England 
Dimmocks  are  descended: 

Gilbert  de  Talboys,  m.  Elizabeth  Gascoigne,  daughter  of  Sir 

William  Gascoigne  and  Margaret  Percy 
Sir  George  de  Talboys 

Anne  de  Talboys,  m.  Sir  Edward  Dymoke  (Dimmock) 
Arthur  Dymoke 
Edward  Dymoke 

Thomas    Dimmock   of   Barnstable,    Massachusetts,    m.    Ann 

Hammond 

Shubael  Dimmock,  m.  Joanna  Bursley 
Thankful  Dimmock,  m.  ^Edward  Waldo 

C  679;] 


Appendix  A 


From  Robert  de  Bellomont  and  Isabel  de  Vermandois 
are  also  descended  the  following: 


John  Adams 
John  Quincy  Adams 
Thomas  Jefferson 
John  Randolph 
Robert  Treat  Paine 
Wendell  Phillips 
William  Ellery  Channing 

George  Washington 
Abraham  Lincoln 
Theodore  Roosevelt 
Charles  Sedgwick  Minot 
William  T.  Sedgwick 
Ellery  Sedgwick 
Aaron  Burr 
Benedict  Arnold 
Timothy  Dwight 
Theodore  Woolsey 
Daniel  C.  Gilman 
Merrill  E.  Gates 

Edward  IV    and    the  House 

of  York 
Henry  VII  and  the  House  of 

Tudor 
Philip  I 
James  I  and  the  House  of 

Stuart 

Georges  I-V 
Victoria 
Edward  VII 


Alexander  Spottiswoode 
Grover  Cleveland 
Charles  Carroll 
Roger  Brooke  Taney 
Nathaniel  Bacon 
George  Dewey 
Thomas  Campbell 

Francis  Parkman 
Edward  Everett 
Ralph  Waldo  Emerson 
James  Smithson 
Ralph  Lane 
J.  Pierpont  Morgan 
John  D.  Rockefeller 
Robert  E.  Lee 
Benjamin  Harrison 
Richard  H.  Dana 
Ulysses  S.  Grant 


Louis  XV    and   the    House  of 

Bourbon 

Victor  Emanuel  II 
Francis  Joseph  and  the  House 

of  Hapsburg 
Wilhelm  II   and  the  House  of 

Hohenzollern 
Leopold  II 
Alfonso  VII 
Manuel 


It  will  perhaps  interest  my  readers  to  know  further 
that  —  like  Phillips  Brooks  and  myself — all  persons  in 
the  above  list  beginning  with  George  Washington  spring 


Colonial  Genealogy 


not  only  from  Isabel,  but  also  from  Eve  de  Mareschal, 
one  of  her  many  great-great-granddaughters. 

5 

Intrigued  by  a  whole  background  of  heredity,  romance, 
and  adventure,  while  on  St.  Paul  of  the  Pribilofs  I  wrote 
the  following  poem: 

To  LADY  ALICE  COURTENEY * 

(Alice,  daughter  of  Pierre  —  by  courtesy  Lord  of  Courtenay,  son  of  Louis  VI, 
"le  Gros,"  a  descendant  of  Charlemagne  —  and  Isabella  de  Courtenay,  heiress 
of  the  estates  of  Devon,  by  marrying  Aymar  (Edmund)  de  Taillefer,  lord  of 
Angouleme,  a  descendant  of  the  swordsmith 

Taillefer  who  sang 

Till  the  hills  of  Hastings  rang, 

became  mother  of  Isabel  de  Taillefer,  wife  of  King  John  and  thus  ancestress 
of  a  series  of  kings,  and  of  a  long  line  of  Cavaliers  and  Puritans  in  England  and 
America,  whereof  the  end  is  not  yet. 

Courtenay,  a  town  in  lie  de  France,  is  the  original  home  of  the  Courteney 
forebears,  said  to  be  of  Danish  descent.) 

I  have  seen  thy  name  today, 
Lady  Alice  Courteney, 
As  a  treasure  brought  to  me 
From  the  mines  of  history. 
'Tis  a  stately  Norman  name 
Of  a  fair  and  stately  dame, 
And  the  picture  that  it  brings 
Of  long-vanished  stately  things 
Comes  to  me  as  keen  and  clear 
As  a  painted  miniature. 

As  I  gaze,  they  pass  away, 

All  the  vistas  of  today, 

All  the  battles  I  have  fought, 

All  the  deeds  my  hands  have  wrought, 

All  the  golden  light  that  fills 

Sunny  Santa  Clara's  hills! 

Unsubstantial  as  a  dream 
Does  my  lone  mist-island  seem, 

1  Original  English  spelling  of  the  family  name. 

C68i  ] 


Appendix  A 


With  its  flower-bespangled  moss 
Wet  by  wayward  waves  that  toss 
Flotsam  from  the  farthest  lands 
Over  Zoltoi's  shining  sands; 
Still  the  cold  gray  cloud  above, 
Sleep-cap  of  the  Pribilof ! 

Now  in  darkling  mist  and  spray, 
Let  the  great  globe  fade  away, 
(All  that  is  become  as  'naught 
In  the  vagrant  world  of  thought) 
Cast  off  seven  hundred  years, 
With  their  load  of  hopes  and  fears, 
And  a  fragrance  comes  to  me, 
Rose  leaves  pressed  in  history, 
Sweetly  strange  and  strangely  sweet; 
Lady  Alice,  may  it  be 
I  am  here  alone  with  thee? 
Let  me  kneel  then,  at  thy  feet. 
Ghosts  from  ghosts  have  naught  to  fear, 
White  the  hand  I  kiss,  my  dear! 

Thus  I  pass  thy  guarded  gate 
Where  thy  mailed  retainers  wait; 
They  will  neither  know  nor  care, 
For  I  tread  with  feet  of  air 
To  thy  walls  of  cold  gray  stone 
Where  the  daylight  never  shone, 
Dismal  halls  that  ne'er  could  be 
Sun-illumined  save  by  thee! 

I  can  see  thee  decked  for  show 
In  the  robes  of  long  ago, 
Brocades  rich  as  tapestry, 
Laces,  silks,  and  jewelry  — 
All  the  far-sought  finery 
Men  have  fancied  meet  for  thee. 
Roses  bloom  along  thy  way, 
(Thou  a  fairer  rose  than  they) 
Pink-tipped  daisies  from  the  grass 
Nod  their  welcome  as  you  pass; 

C682  ] 


Colonial  Genealogy 


In  the  corn  fields  here  and  there 
Scarlet  poppies  flame  and  flare; 
From  the  hawthorn's  greenery 
Sweet  the  thrush's  call  to  thee, 
And  the  skylark  soaring  high 
Trills  his  anthem  to  the  sky  — 
Lady  Alice  Courteney, 
Fair  are  Devon  fields  in  May! 

See  I  from  the  turret-tower 

Where  my  lady  has  her  bower, 

Far  beyond  the  castle  walls 

Slope  the  green  fields  toward  the  south: 

There  thy  river  finds  its  mouth 

And  the  great  sea  swells  and  falls, 

There  the  salt  white  spray  is  thrown 

O'er  the  rocks  of  Eddystone ; 

While  above  the  curving  bay 

In  its  terraces  of  gray 

Stern  and  stolid  Plymouth  town 

Watches  with  ascetic  frown 

All  that  come  and  all  that  go 

On  the  blue  waves  to  and  fro, 

To  the  line  of  hills  that  rise 

Faint  against  the  southern  skies, 

Where  the  alien  people  be  — 

The  white  cliffs  of  Brittany! 

All  this  have  I  seen  today, 
Lady  Alice  Courteney, 
As  it  chanced  thy  Norman  name 
On  the  page  before  me  came: 
What  but  name  is  left  to  thee? 
What  is  such  a  name  to  me? 

Lady  Alice  Courteney, 

Thou  hast  lived  and  loved  for  me. 

(Fairer  thou  than  any  rose 

That  in  Devon's  garden  grows!) 

Lady,  thou  wert  made  for  Love, 

Love  had  much  to  give  to  thee. 

C683  3 


Appendix  A 


Through  the  long  years  coming,  going, 
Ever  is  thy  life-blood  flowing 
From  the  hearts  of  noble  earls, 
Through  the  veins  of  common  churls, 
Knight  and  lady,  boor  and  clown, 
As  the  ages  follow  down; 
Of  one  blood  the  nations  be, 
Of  one  blood  art  thou  with  me! 

See  the  rush  of  history, 
Strewn  with  cast-off  finery, 
And  the  way  of  common  things, 
Cluttered  with  the  pomp  of  kings! 

Now  in  dim  perspective  seen 
As  the  centuries  roll  away, 
Generations  vanishing 
Move  across  the  changing  scene, 
Knights  and  squires  and  men  at  arms, 
Captains  of  the  men-o'-war, 
Masters  of  the  Devon  farms, 
Priests  and  bishops  here  and  there, 
Puritan  and  Cavalier; 
Some  in  silks  and  laces  fine, 
Some  in  simple  hodden  gray, 
Children  all  of  thee  and  thine, 

Of  thy  blood  of  Courteney. 

• 

Theirs  the  shame  and  glory  set 
In  thy  fame,  Plantagenet! 

Once  upon  Saint  Crispin's  day 
'Twas  the  blood  of  Courteney 
Stained  thy  meadows,  Agincourt! 
Swiftly  through  the  veins  it  flows 
As  the  fire  of  battle  glows; 
Proudly  when  the  Virgin  Queen 
Rode  the  loyal  ranks  between; 
Sternly  when  at  Marston  Moor, 
On  the  heath  in  suppliance  kneeling, 
Not  to  England's  lord  appealing, 
But  the  Lord  of  Hosts  before ! 


Colonial  Genealogy 


Men  of  Devon  once  fought  on 
Till  a  day  and  night  were  gone. 
"What  is  one  day  less  or  more 
On  the  sea  or  on  the  shore?" 

The  Revenge  was  but  a  wreck, 
Broken,  blood-washed  was  her  deck: 
"Sink  her,  split  her  sharp  in  twain, 
Fall  in  God's  hands,  master  gunner, 
Never  into  clutch  of  Spain!" 

But  at  last  the  Dragon  *  came 
Stinging,  scorching  far  and  near, 
Blasting  with  his  tongue  of  flame 
The  fair  homes  of  Devonshire, 
And  hot  feelings  unsuppressed 
Surged  in  every  Devon  breast 
Till  the  signal  in  His  name 
"To  the  watching  Pilgrims  came." 
Then  for  home  and  conscience'  sake, 
With  the  rest  fled  Goodman  Drake, 
That,  God  helping,  o'er  the  sea 
Build  they  a  new  England,  free. 

Grim,  austere,  and  stern  were  they, 
Errant  sons  of  Courteney, 
But  free  born,  of  hardy  stock; 
Never  in  the  Pilgrim's  grave 
Lay  the  weakling  or  the  slave,  — 
Dust  to  dust,  but  rock  to  rock. 

Whatsoever  their  rank  or  fame, 
Lady  Alice  all  must  claim; 
Lady,  wouldst  thy  children  scan, 
Thou  shalt  see  the  Common  Man. 
As  the  centuries  come  and  go, 
Through  their  veins  thy  blood  shall  flow; 
For  the  fairest  Time  has  molded 
Or  in  softest  garments  folded, 

1  An  allusion  to  the  Dragon  Persecution  of  Dissenters  about  the  year  1600. 

C  685  3 


Appendix  A 


Comes  at  last  in  nature's  plan 
To  her  simple  Common  Man. 

And  thus  hast  thou  come  to  me, 
Lady  Alice  Courteney! 

July  26,  1896 

The  following  table  indicates  the  relation  of  Lady  Alice 
de  Courteney  to  Lady  Margaret,  already  mentioned: 

Alice  de  Courteney,  m.  Aymar  (Edmund)  de  Taillefer,  Comte 

d'Angouleme 

Isabella  de  Taillefer  d'Angouleme,  m:  King  John 
Henry  III,  b.  1216,  m.  Eleanor  de  Berenger  of  Provence 
Edward  I,  b.  1239,  m.  Eleanor  of  Castile,  daughter  of  Ferdi- 
nand III,  San  Fernando  Rey  de  Espafia 
Elizabeth  Plantagenet,  m.  Humphrey  de  Bohun  VIII 
Margaret  de  Bohun,  m.  Hugh  de  Courteney,  Earl  of  Devon 
Edward  Courteney,  m.  Emeline  Dawney  (d'Aunay) 
Sir  Hugh  Courteney,  m.  Maud  Beaumont 
Margaret  Courteney,  m.  Sir  Theobald  Grenville 

The  Courteney  male  line  descends  through  Robert, 
uncle  of  Lady  Alice,  as  follows: 

Sir  Reginald  de  Courteney  came  with  Henry  II  to  England  in 
1151,  and  then  married  Hawise  Deincourt  de  Abrincis, 
heiress  of  Devon; 

Robert  de  Courteney,  m.  Mary  de  Redvers 
John  de  Courteney,  m.  Isabel  de  Vere 
Sir  Hugh  de  Courteney,  m.  Eleanor  de  Spencer 
Baron  Hugh   de  Courteney,   Earl  of  Devonshire,   m.  Agnes 

St.  John 

Hugh  de  Courteney  III,  m.  Margaret  de  Bohun 
Edward  de  Courteney,  m.  Emeline  Dawney 
Sir  Hugh  de  Courteney  IV,  m.  Maud  Beaumont 
Margaret  de  Courteney,  m.  Sir  Theobald  Grenville 

The  descent  of  the  British  people  from  Charlemagne 
must,  of  course,  have  led  down  along  a  myriad  of  lines. 
Specifically,  four  of  these  have  been  traced  in  the  pre- 
ceding pages: 

C  686  3 


Colonial  Genealogy 


(a)  Through  Isabel  de  Vermandois  from  her  father,  Hugh  the 

Great,  son  of  Henry  I  of  France;  and 

(b)  Through  Isabel  from  her  mother,  Adelheid  de  Vermandois; 

(c)  Through  Lady  Alice  de  Courteney,  from  her  father  Pierre; 

(d)  Through   the   Plantagenets   and   their  descendants,   from 

Matilda  of  Flanders,  wife  of  William  the  Conqueror, 
herself  descended  from  Charlemagne  and  Alfred  alike. 

Of  Charlemagne,  our  common  forebear,  we  read  that 

He  was  sagacious,  energetic,  and  vigilant  as  a  ruler  and 
commander  alike.  He  watched  over  and  fostered  agriculture, 
trade,  art,  and  letters,  with  untiring  zeal,  clearing  away  forests, 
draining  swamps,  founding  monasteries  and  schools,  building 
cities,  constructing  splendid  palaces  as  at  Aix,  Worms,  and 
Ingelheim  and  drawing  to  his  court  scholars  and  poets  from  all 
nations.  .  .  .  He  was  himself  proficient  in  science  as  well  as 
in  all  hardy  accomplishments,  speaking  Latin  and  knowing 
Greek  though  barely  able  to  write.  He  was  tall  and  stately, 
measuring  seven  feet  of  his  own  foot-lengths,  with  long  nose, 
bright  eyes  and  a  feeble  voice,  but  simple  in  his  life, "excelling 
all  men  of  his  time,  to  all  alike  dread  and  beloved,  by  all  alike 
admired/'  as  he  was  described  by  the  early  chronicler,  Eginhard. 

But  according  to  Mr.  H.  G.  Wells,  "  the  memory  of 
that  raiser  of  political  ghosts,  that  energetic  but  illiterate 
theologian,  Charlemagne  .  .  .  preaching  the  gospel  with 
fire  and  sword  ...  as  with  Alexander  the  Great  and 
Julius  Caesar  has  been  enormously  exaggerated  by  pos- 
terity," a  habit  which  runs  in  his  family.  But  we  must 
consider  the  dark  and  bloody  background  of  ignorance 
and  intolerance  before  which  arises  his  stately  figure.  It 
was  left  to  our  own  generation  to  crumple  the  last  of  his 
pasteboard  imitations. 

As  for  Alfred,  Charlemagne's  contemporary,  a  modern 
historian  says: 

Alike  for  what  he  did  and  for  what  he  was  there  is  none  to 
equal  Alfred  in  the  whole  line  of  English  sovereigns;  and  no 
monarch  in  history  ever  deserved  more  truly  the  epithet  of 
Great. 

C687  ] 


B 

INAUGURAL  ADDRESS,  STANFORD  UNIVERSITY, 
OCTOBER  i,  1891 

WE  come  together  today  for  the  first  time  as  teachers  and 
students.  With  this  relation  the  life  of  the  Leland  Stanford 
Junior  University  begins.  It  is  such  personal  contact  of  young 
men  and  young  women  with  scholars  and  investigators  which 
constitutes  the  life  of  the  university.  It  is  for  us  as  teachers 
and  students  in  the  university's  first  year  to  lay  the  foundations 
of  a  school  which  may  last  as  long  as  human  civilization.  Ours 
is  the  youngest  of  the  universities,  but  it  is  heir  to  the  wisdom 
of  all  the  ages,  and  with  this  inheritance  it  has  the  promise 
of  a  rapid  and  sturdy  growth. 

Our  university  has  no  history  to  fall  back  upon;  no  memories 
of  great  teachers  haunt  its  corridors;  in  none  of  its  rooms 
appear  the  traces  which  show  where  a  great  man  has  lived  or 
worked.  No  tender  associations  cling,  ivy-like,  to  its  fresh, 
new  walls.  It  is  hallowed  by  no  traditions.  It  is  hampered 
by  none.  Its  finger  posts  all  point  forward.  Traditions  and 
associations  it  is  ours  to  make.  From  our  work  the  future  of 
the  university  will  grow,  as  the  splendid  lily  from  the  modest 
bulb. 

But  the  future,  with  its  glories  and  its  responsibilities,  will 
be  in  other  hands.  It  is  ours  at  the  beginning  to  give  the  uni- 
versity its  form,  its  tendencies,  its  customs.  The  power  of 
precedent  will  cause  to  be  repeated  over  and  over  again  every- 
thing that  we  do  —  our  errors  as  well  as  our  wisdom.  It  be- 
comes us,  then,  to  begin  the  work  modestly,  as  under  the  eye 
of  the  coming  ages.  We  must  lay  the  foundations  broad  and 
firm,  so  as  to  give  full  support  to  whatever  edifice  tke  future 
may  build.  Ours  is  the  humbler  task,  but  not  the  least  in  im- 
portance, and  our  work  will  not  be  in  vain  if  all  that  we  do 
is  done  in  sincerity.  As  sound  as  the  rocks  from  which  these 
walls  are  hewn  should  be  the  work  of  every  teacher  who  comes 
within  them. 

We  hope  to  give  to  our  students  the  priceless  legacy  of  the 
educated  man,  the  power  of  knowing  what  really  is.  The 
higher  education  should  bring  men  into  direct  contact  with 
truth.  It  should  help  to  free  them  from  the  dead  hands  of  old 

688 


Inaugural  Address 


traditions  and  to  enable  them  to  form  opinions  worthy  of  the 
new  evidence  each  new  day  brings  before  them.  An  educated 
man  should  not  be  the  slave  of  the  past,  not  a  copy  of  men 
who  have  gone  before  him.  He  must  be  in  some  degree  the 
founder  of  a  new  intellectual  dynasty;  for  each  new  thinker 
is  a  new  type  of  man.  Whatever  is  true  is  the  truest  thing  in 
the  universe,  and  mental  and  moral  strength  alike  come  from 
our  contact  with  it.  We  may  teach  the  value  of  truth  to  our 
students  by  showing  that  we  value  it  ourselves.  In  like  manner, 
the  value  of  right  living  can  be  taught  by  right  examples.  In 
the  words  of  a  wise  teacher,"  Science  knows  no  source  of  life 
but  life."  The  teacher  is  one  of  the  accredited  delegates  of 
civilization.  In  Heine's  phrase,  he  is  a  Knight  of  the  Holy 
Ghost.  The  harvest  is  bounteous,  but  the  laborers  are  still 
all  too  few;  for  a  generous  education  should  be  the  birthright 
of  every  man  and  woman  in  America. 

I  shall  not  try  today  to  give  you  our  ideal  of. what  a  uni- 
versity should  be.  If  our  work  is  successful,  our  ideals  will 
appear  in  the  daily  life  of  the  school.  In  a  school,  as  in  a  fortress, 
it  is  not  the  form  of  the  building,  but  the  strength  of  the  ma- 
terials, which  determine  its  effectiveness.  With  a  garrison  of 
hearts  of  oak,  it  may  not  matter  even  whether  there  be  a  fortress. 
Whatever  its  form,  or  its  organization,  or  its  pretensions,  the 
character  of  the  university  is  fixed  by  the  men  who  teach. 
The  university  spirit  flows  out  from  these  teachers,  and  its 
organization  serves  mainly  to  bring  them  together.  "Colleges 
can  only  serve  us,"  says  Emerson,  "when  their  aim  is  not  to 
drill,  but  to  create;  when  they  gather  from  afar  every  ray  of 
various  genius  to  their  hospitable  halls,  and  by  their  con- 
centrated fires  set  the  heart  of  their  youth  in  flame."  Strong 
men  make  universities  strong.  A  great  man  never  fails  to 
leave  a  great  mark  on  every  youth  with  whom  he  comes  in 
contact.  A  professor  to  whom  original  investigation  is  un- 
known should  have  no  place  in  a  university.  Men  of  common- 
place or  second-hand  scholarship  are  of  necessity  men  of  low 
ideals,  however  much  the  fact  may  be  disguised. 

And  above  and  beyond  all  learning  is  the  influence  of  char- 
acter, the  impulse  to  virtue  and  piety  which  comes  from  men 
whose  lives  show  that  virtue  and  piety  really  exist.  For  the 
life  of  the  most  exalted  as  well  as  the  humblest  of  men,  there 


Appendix  B 


can  be  no  nobler  motto  than  that  inscribed  by  the  great  scholar 
of  the  last  century  over  his  home  at  Hammarby:  " Innocue 
vivito;  numen  adest."  Live  blameless;  God  is  near.  "This," 
said  Linnaeus,  "is  the  wisdom  of  my  life."  Every  advance 
which  we  make  toward  the  realization  of  the  truth  of  the 
permanence  and  immanence  of  law,  brings  us  nearer  to  Him 
who  is  the  First  Cause  of  all  law  and  all  phenomena. 

While  the  work  of  the  teachers  must  make  the  kernel  of  the 
university,  we  rejoice  that  here  at  Palo  Alto  even  the  husks 
are  beautiful.  Beauty  and  fitness  are  great  forces  in  education. 
Every  object  with  which  the  young  mind  comes  in  contact 
leaves  on  it  its  trace. 

Plain  living  has  ever  gone  with  high  thinking.  But  grace 
and  fitness  have  an  educative  power  too  often  forgotten  in 
this  utilitarian  age.  These  long  corridors  with  their  stately 
arches,  these  circles  of  waving  palms,  will  have  their  part  in 
the  students'  training  as  surely  as  the  chemical  laboratory  or 
the  seminary  room.  Each  stone  in  the  quadrangle  shall  teach 
its  lesson  of  grace  and  of  genuineness,  and  occupy  a  warm  place 
in  every  student's  heart.  Pictures  of  this  fair  region  will  cling 
to  his  memory  amid  the  figures  of  the  draughting-room.  He 
will  not  forget  the  fine  waves  of  our  two  mountain  ranges,  over- 
arched by  a  soft  blue  Grecian  sky,  nor  the  ancient  oak  trees, 
nor  the  gently  sloping  fields,  changing  from  vivid  green  to 
richest  yellow,  as  the  seasons  change.  The  noble  pillars  of  the 
gallery  of  art,  its  rich  treasures,  the  choicest  remains  of  the 
ideals  of  past  ages  —  all  these,  and  a  hundred  other  things 
which  each  one  will  find  out  for  himself,  shall  fill  his  mind  with 
bright  pictures,  never  to  be  rubbed  out  in  the  wear  of  life.  Thus 
in  the  character  of  every  student  shall  be  left  some  imperish- 
able trace  of  the  beauty  of  Palo  Alto. 

The  Golden  Age  of  California  begins  when  its  gold  is  used 
for  purposes  like  this.  From  such  deeds  must  rise  the  new  Cali- 
fornia of  the  coming  century,  no  longer  the  California  of  the 
gold-seeker  and  the  adventurer,  but  the  abode  of  high-minded 
men  and  women,  training  in  the  wisdom  of  the  ages,  and  imbued 
with  the  love  of  nature,  the  love  of  man,  and  the  love  of  God. 
And  bright  indeed  will  be  the  future  of  our  state  if,  in  the  use- 
fulness of  the  university,  every  hope  and  prayer  of  the  founders 
shall  be  realized. 

£6903 


EXTRACTS  FROM  CERTAIN  PERSONAL  LETTERS  OF 
MRS.  JANE  LATHROP  STANFORD 

AFTER  the  decision  of  Judge  Ross  (July  6,  1895), 
Stanford  wrote: 

I  dare  not  let  my  soul  rejoice  over  the  future.  It  must  be 
more  sure  than  it  is  now.  I  hope  and  pray  that  the  final  de- 
cision will  be  as  sure  as  the  first.  It  means  more  to  me  than 
you  or  the  world  have  dreamed.  It  means  an  unsullied,  un- 
tarnished name  as  a  blessed  heritage  to  the  university.  My 
husband  often  used  to  say:  "A  good  name  is  better  than 
riches."  God  cannot  but  be  touched  by  my  constant  pleading, 
and  this  first  decision  by  Judge  Ross  makes  me  humble  that  I 
so  unworthy  should  have  received  the  smallest  attention. 

On  July  29,  1895,  she  wrote: 

I  send  a  precious  letter  from  Mr.  Andrew  White  for  you  to 
read.  I  read  it  with  a  heart  running  over  with  various  emo- 
tions. Mr.  Stanford  esteemed  him  so  highly  I  could  not  but 
feel  like  asking  God  to  let  my  loved  ones  in  heaven  know  the 
contents  of  this  letter.  I  prize  this  letter  beyond  my  ability 
to  express.  It  lifted  my  soul  from  its  heaviness.  My  heart 
is  one  unceasing  prayer  to  the  All  Wise,  All  Merciful  one,  that 
all  will  be  well  for  the  future  of  the  good  work  under  your  care. 
When  the  end  of  our  troubles  is  over,  all  [these  letters]  will 
be  placed  in  your  hands  for  future  reading  by  our  students, 
a  story  for  them  when  I  have  passed  into  peace. 

Soon  after,  she  wrote: 

I  return  herewith  Mr.  Choate's  kind  letter.  God  bless  him, 
for  he  was  a  friend  indeed. 

Again,  on  August  15,  1895: 

It  gives  me  great  satisfaction  to  read  Professor  Stillman's 
letter.  I  perceive,  besides  loyalty  to  the  university,  the  noble, 
tender  loyalty  to  my  husband's  memory.  ...  I  prize  him  as 
a  professor,  for  he  was  the  only  selection  made  by  Mr.  Stanford. 
He  knew  him  well  and  judged  his  character  rightly,  as  this  act 

C  691  3 


Appendix  C 


on  his  part  has  proved.  ...  I  always  enjoy  my  home-coming. 
Even  its  desolation  is  sacred  to  my  heart.  It  holds  many  dear 
memories  that  no  one  on  earth  knows  but  myself. 

On  November  24,  1895: 

It  has  been  my  policy  to  say  as  little  about  my  financial 
affairs  to  the  outside  world  as  possible,  but  I  feel  sure  that  I 
am  doing  myself  and  our  blessed  work  injustice  by  allowing 
the  impression  among  all  classes  to  feel  certain  there  is  plenty 
of  money  at  my  command,  that  the  future  is  assured,  the 
battle  fought  and  won.  ...  I  only  ask  righteous  justice.  I 
ask  not  for  myself,  but  that  I  may  be  able  to  discharge  my 
duty  and  loyalty  to  the  one  who  trusted  me,  and  loved  me,  and 
loves  me  still.  I  am  so  poor  myself  that  I  cannot  this  year 
give  to  any  charity;  not  even  do  I  give  this  festive  season  to 
any  of  my  family.  I  do  not  tell  you  this,  kind  friend,  in  a  com- 
plaining way,  for  when  one  has  pleasant  surroundings,  all  we 
want  to  eat  and  wear,  added  to  this  have  those  in  their  lives 
we  can  count  on  as  friends,  it  would  be  sinful  to  complain.  I 
repeat  it  only  that  you  my  friend  may  know,  I  ask  only  justice 
to  the  dear  ones  gone  from  earth  life  and  the  living  one  left. 

I  am  willing  you  should  speak  plainly,  to  any  one  who  may 
question  as  to  the  university  or  myself.  I  have  many  devoted 
and  true  loyal  friends  in  Washington,  and  I  am  sure  did  they 
know  I  was  kept  from  my  rights,  they  would  speak  their  senti- 
ments openly,  and  when  it  was  known  a  public  sentiment  was 
in  my  favor  and  against  their  unfairness,  it  would  cause  a  dif- 
ferent course  to  be  pursued  toward  me.  I  shall  henceforth 
speak  plainly,  and  I  desire  you  to  do  so.  You  will  meet  our 
good  President,  Mr.  Cleveland,  my  good  and  true  friend 
Secretary  Carlisle,  Mr.  John  Foster  and  many  others,  and  you 
.  .  .  can  do  our  blessed  work  good  and  God  will  bless  the  act, 
and  bring  fruit  to  bear  from  the  seeds  sown.  I  have  kept  my- 
self and  my  affairs  in  the  background.  It  has  been  an  inspira- 
tion from  the  source  from  which  all  good  comes,  from  my 
Father,  God  —  I  trust  Him  to  lead  me  all  along  the  rest  of  the 
journey  of  life.  He  has  led  me  thus  far  through  the  deep 
waters,  and  joy  will  come,  for  He  never  deserts  the  widow,  the 
childless,  the  orphan.  I  have  His  promise  "blessed  are  those 
who  mourn,  for  they  shall  be  comforted.".  .  .  Everything  is 

£692] 


Letters  of  Mrs.  Stanford 


going  on  smoothly  as  far  as  I  know  at  the  university.  The 
boys  are  wild  over  the  game  to  be  played.  I  hope  they  will 
win,  because  they  will  be  happy  if  they  do. 

On  July  20,  1896,  she  wrote  to  a  candidate  for  a  pro- 
fessorship : 

The  university  still  is  restricted  and  limited  in  its  ambitions 
and  its  aims,  because  of  my  inability  to  increase  the  number  of 
students  or  the  number  of  professors.  The  gift  of  $2,500,000 
in  bonds  which  I  have  by  the  grace  of  God  been  enabled  to 
give  to  the  trustees  for  the  present  and  future  maintenance  of 
the  university  brings  in  a  monthly  income  of  $10,000,  while 
the  actual  expenses  for  the  faculty  and  the  president  and  the 
necessary  matters  bring  the  sum  total  of  expenses  per  month 
to  $19,000.  This  $9000  I  am  obliged  to  furnish  myself,  through 
the  strictest  economy  and  the  husbanding  of  resources;  con- 
sequently I  am  not  increasing  expenses,  but  on  the  contrary 
shall  retrench  in  the  future. 

From  Paris,  August  30,  1897,  she  wrote: 

I  wish  the  rest  of  my  responsibilities  caused  me  as  little 
care  as  does  the  internal  working  of  the  good  work.  I  am  only 
anxious  to  furnish  you  the  funds  to  pay  the  needs  required. 
I  could  live  on  bread  and  water  to  do  this,  my  part,  and  would 
feel  that  God  and  my  loved  ones  in  the  life  'beyond  this  smiled 
on  the  efforts  to  ensure  the  future  of  my  dear  husband's  work 
to  better  humanity. 

Again,  in  1897, to  ner  trusted  attorney,  Russell  Wilson: 

I  stand  almost  alone  in  this  blessed  work  left  to  my  care, 
and  I  want  and  need  the  president's  support  and  his  helpful- 
ness in  this  work  as  far  as  he  can  support  me.  There  are  plenty 
who  are  interested  in  the  affairs  of  the  estate  with  me,  but  few 
in  the  university. 

In  July,  1898: 

If  I  am  able  to  keep  the  university  in  the  condition  it  is  now, 
I  shall  be  more  than  thankful.  $15,000  a  month  is  a  great 
expenditure,  and  exhausts  my  ingenuity  and  resources  to  such 
an  extent  that  had  I  not  the  university  so  close  to  my  heart 

t  693  3 


Appendix  C 


I  would  relieve  myself  of  this  enormous  burden  and  take  rest 
and  recreation  for  the  next  year.  But  I  prefer  to  see  the  good 
work  going  on  in  its  present  condition,  and  I  am  not  promising 
myself  anything  further  for  the  future  until  the  skies  are  brighter 
than  they  are  now. 

On  December  14,  1900,  she  repeats: 

I  could  lay  down  my  life  for  the  university.  Not  for  any 
pride  in  its  perpetuating  the  names  of  our  dear  son  and  our- 
selves, its  founders,  but  for  the  sincere  hope  I  cherish  in  its 
sending  forth  to  the  world  grand  men  and  women  who  will 
aid  in  developing  the  best  there  is  to  be  found  in  human  nature. 

As  this  volume  contains  the  record  of  many  friend- 
ships, I  may  perhaps  be  pardoned  for  reproducing  here 
in  conclusion  a  letter  addressed  by  Mrs.  Stanford  to  the 
president  of  the  board  of  trustees,  February  n,  1897: 

Let  me  speak  of  the  honored  President  of  the  University. 
Every  year  since  his  installment  his  superior  abilities,  his 
unshaken  influence  upon  the  Faculty  and  students,  and  in 
return  their  fidelity  and  loyalty  to  him  have  filled  me  with 
gratitude.  That  one  so  able,  so  scholarly,  and  yet  so  approach- 
able by  all  classes  of  society,  so  willing  and  ready  to  lecture 
and  aid  all  institutions  throughout  the  state,  many  times 
making  self-sacrifice  to  do  so,  should  be  among  us,  I  am  sure 
has  caused  California  at  large  to  feel  that  my  husband  was 
wisely  led  when  he  selected  him  for  the  position  he  so  ably 
fills.  As  for  myself  I  could  say  much  in  his  praise,  for  he  has 
tenderly  and  manfully  helped  to  lighten  my  burdens,  and 
assumes  the  cares  and  responsibilities  of  his  position  without 
any  complaint,  fearing  to  add  to  my  cares.  I  will  only  add 
that  my  earnest  and  sincere  prayer  is  that  no  circumstances 
may  occur  to  take  him  from  his  present  position  during  the 
years  in  which  the  responsibility  rests  upon  me.  And  I  would 
like  to  think  that  his  connection  with  my  husband  in  the  past 
may  serve  as  a  link  to  bind  him  to  the  University  for  many 
years  to  come  when  good  old  age  may  still  find  him  amid  the 
scenes  of  dear  old  Palo  Alto,  blessed  and  honored  by  the  citi- 
zens of  California  and  the  students  and  graduates  that  go 
forth  every  year  to  fill  their  places  in  life. 

1:6943 


D 

FROM  "LEST  WE  FORGET" 

THE  fact  that  the  address  bearing  the  above-mentioned 
title  marked  a  turning  point  in  my  life  seems  to  justify 
me  in  making  here  a  somewhat  extended  quotation 
from  it: 

It  is  too  late  for  us  now  to  ask  how  we  got  into  the  war. 
Was  it  inevitable?  Was  it  wise?  Was  it  righteous?  We  need 
not  ask  those  questions,  because  the  answers  will  not  help  us. 
We  may  have  our  doubts  as  to  one  or  all  of  these,  but  all  doubts 
we  must  keep  to  ourselves.  We  are  in  the  midst  of  battle,  and 
must  fight  to  the  end.  The  "rough  riders"  are  in  the  saddle. 
.  .  .  The  crisis  comes  when  the  war  is  over.  What  then?  Our 
question  is  not  what  we  shall  do  with  Cuba,  Porto  Rico,  and 
the  Philippines.  It  is  what  these  prizes  will  do  to  us.  Can 
we  let  go  of  them  in  honor  or  in  safety?  If  not,  what  if  we  hold 
them?  What  will  be  the  reflex  effect  of  great  victories,  sud- 
denly realized  strength,  the  patronizing  applause,  the  ill- 
concealed  envy  of  great  nations,  the  conquest  of  strange  terri- 
tories, the  raising  of  our  flag  beyond  the  seas  ?  All  this  is  new 
to  us.  It  is  un-American;  it  is  contrary  to  our  traditions;^ 
it  is  delicious;  it  is  intoxicating. 

For  this  is  the  fact  before  us.  We  have  come  to  our  man- 
hood among  the  nations  of  the  earth.  What  shall  we  do  about 
it  ?  The  war  once  finished,  shall  we  go  back  to  our  farms  and 
factories,  to  our  squabbles  over  tariffs  and  coinage,  our  petty 
trading  in  peanuts  and  post  offices?  Or  shall  our  country  turn 
away  from  these  things  and  stand  forth  once  for  all  a  great 
naval  power,  our  vessels  in  every  sea,  our  influence  felt  over 
all  the  earth?  Shall  we  be  the  plain  United  States  again,  or 
shall  we  be  another  England,  fearless  even  of  our  own  great 
mother,  second  to  her  only  in  age  and  prestige?  .  .  . 

The  war  has  stirred  the  fires  of  patriotism,  we  say.  Cer- 
tainly, but  they  were  already  there,  else  they  could  not  be 

C  695  3 


Appendix  D 


stirred.  I  doubt  if  there  is  more  love  of  country  with  us  today 
than  there  was  a  year  ago.  Real  love  of  country  is  not  easily 
moved.  Its  guarantee  is  its  permanence.  Love  of  adventure, 
love  of  fight,  these  are  soon  kindled.  It  is  these  to  which  the 
battle  spirit  appeals.  Love  of  adventure  we  may  not  despise. 
It  is  the  precious  heritage  of  new  races;  it  is  the  basis  of  per- 
sonal courage;  but  it  is  not  patriotism;  it  is  push.  The  race 
which  cannot  fight,  if  need  be,  is  a  puny  folk  destined  to  be 
the  prey  of  tyrants.  But  one  who  fights  for  fight's  sake  is  a 
bully,  not  a  hero.  The  bully  is  at  heart  a  coward.  To  fight 
only  when  we  are  sure  of  the  result,  is  no  proof  of  national 
courage. 

Patriotism  is  the  will  to  serve  one's  country;  to  make  one's 
country  better  worth  serving.  It  is  a  course  of  action  rather 
than  a  sentiment.  It  is  serious  rather  than  stirring.  The 
shrilling  of  the  mob  is  not  patriotism.  It  is  not  patriotism  to 
trample  on  the  Spanish  flag,  to  burn  firecrackers,  or  to  twist 
the  Lion's  tail.  The  shrieking  of  war  editors  is  not  patriotism. 
Nowadays,  nations  buy  newspapers  as  they  buy  ships.  What- 
ever is  noisy,  whether  in  Congress  or  the  pulpit,  or  on  the 
streets,  cannot  be  patriotism.  It  is  not  in  the  galleries  that 
we  find  brave  men.  "Patriotism,"  says  Dr.  Johnson,  "is  the 
last  refuge  of  the  scoundrel."  But  he  was  speaking  of  counter- 
feit patriotism.  There  could  not  be  a  counterfeit  were  there 
not  also  a  reality. 

But  this  I  see  as  I  watch  the  situation:  True  patriotism  de- 
clines as  the  war  spirit  rises.     Men  say  they  have  no  interest 
in  reform  until  the  war  is  over.     There  is  no  use  talking  of 
better  financial  methods,  of  fairer  adjustment  of  taxes,  of  wiser 
administration  of  affairs,  until  the  war  fever  has  passed  by. 
The  patriotism  of  the  hour  looks  to  a  fight  with  some  other 
nation,  not  toward  greater  pride  in  our  own. 
\jf    There  are  some  who  justify  war  for  war's  sake.     Blood- 
I  letting  "relieves  the  pressure  on  the  boundaries."     It  whets 
I    courage.    It  keeps  the  ape  and  tiger  alive  in  men.    All  this  is 
detestable.    To  waste  good  blood  is  pure  murder,  if  nothing  is 
j    gained  by  it.    To  let  blood  for  blood's  sake  is  bad  in  politics 
I    as  it  is  in  medicine.    War  is  killing,  —  brutal,  barbarous  kill- 
1   ing,  —  and  its  direct  effects  are  mostly  evil.     Too  often  the 
\  courage  of  brave  men  is  an  excuse  for  the  depredations  of  venal 


"Lest  We  Forget 


politicians.     The  glorious    banner  of  freedom   becomes    the 
cover  for  the  sutler's  tent.1 

The  test  of  civilization  is  the  substitution  of  law  for  war;, 
statutes  for  brute  strength.     No  doubt  diplomacy,  as  one  of 
our  Senators  has  said,  is  mostly  "a  pack  of  lies,"  and  arbitra- 
tion may  be  compulsory  and  arbitrary  compromise.     But  in 
the  long  run  truth  will  out,  even  in  diplomacy.  .  .  . 

Why,  then,  shall  we  not  hold  Cuba,  if  she  becomes  ours  by 
right  of  conquest?  Because  that  would  be  a  cowardly  thing 
to  do.  The  justification  of  her  capture  is  that  we  do  not  want 
her.  If  we  want  Cuba,  common  decency  says  that  we  must 
let  her  alone.  Ours  is  a  war  of  mercy,  not  of  conquest.  This 
we  have  plainly  declared  to  all  the  nations.  Perhaps  we  meant 
what  we  said,  though  the  speeches  in  Congress  do  not  make 
this  clear.  If  we  can  trust  the  records,  our  chief  motives  were 
three:  desire  for  political  capital,  desire  for  revenge,  and 
sympathy  for  humanity.  .  .  . 

If  we  retire  with  clean  hands,  it  will  be  because  our  hands 
are  empty.  To  keep  Cuba  or  the  Philippines  would  be  to 
follow  the  example  of  conquering  nations.  Doubtless  England 
would  do  it  in  our  place.  The  habit  of  domination  makes  men 
unscrupulous.  .  .  . 

There  are  three  main  reasons  for  opposing  every  step  toward 
imperialism.  First,  dominion  is  brute  force;  second,  dependent 
nations  are  slave  nations;  third,  the  making  of  men  is  greater 
than  the  building  of  empires.  .  .  . 

Though  one  in  blood  with  England,  our  course  of  political 
activities  has  not  lain  parallel  with  hers.  We  were  estranged 
in  the  beginning,  and  we  have  had  other  affairs  on  our  hands. 
We  have  turned  our  faces  westward,  and  our  work  has  made 
us  strong.  We  have  had  our  forests  to  clear,  our  prairies  to 
break,  our  rivers  to  harness,  our  own  problem  of  slavery  to 

1  This  sentence  I  put  into  the  form  of  epigrammatic  verse  : 

O  Freedom,  I  had  dreamed  that  thou  wert  dying, 
Thy  banner  Lincoln  once,  and  Franklin  bore 
As  Milton,  Pym,  and  Hampden  had  before  ; 
Low  in  the  dust  I  seemed  to  see  it  lying, 
And  they  who  bore  its  sacred  staff  were  trying 
From  its  fair  folds  to  frame  a  sutler's  tent, 
And  thou  unconscious  while  its  web  they  rent. 

C697  a 


Appendix  D 


adjust.  We  have  followed  the  spirit  of  Washington's  address 
for  a  hundred  years,  until  the  movement  of  history  has  brought 
us  to  the  parting  of  the  ways.  Federalism  or  Imperialism  — 
which  shall  it  be? 

But  whatever  the  outcome  of  the  present  war,  whatever  the 
fateful  twentieth  century  may  bring,  the  primal  duty  of  Ameri- 
cans is  never  to  forget  that  men  are  more  than  nations;  that 
wisdom  is  more  than  glory,  and  virtue  more  than  dominion 
of  the  sea.  The  kingdom  of  God  is  within  us.  The  nation 
exists  for  its  men,  never  do  men  exist  for  the  nation.  "The 
only  government  that  I  recognize,"  said  Thoreau,  "and  it 
matters  not  how  few  are  at  the  head  of  it  or  how  small  its  army, 
is  the  power  that  establishes  justice  in  the  land,  never  that  which 
establishes  injustice."  And  the  will  of  free  men  to  be  just  one 
toward  another  is  our  best  guarantee  that  "government  of 
the  people,  for  the  people,  and  by  the  people,  shall  not  perish 
from  the  earth." 


£698 


APPEAL  OF  THE  ANTI-IMPERIALIST  LEAGUE,  1899 

We  urge,  therefore,  all  lovers  of  freedom,  without  regard  to 
party  associations,  to  cooperate  with  us  to  the  following  ends: 

First,  that  our  government  shall  take  immediate  steps 
toward  a  suspension  of  hostilities  in  the  Philippines  and  a 
conference  with  the  Philippine  leaders,  with  a  view  of  prevent- 
ing further  bloodshed  upon  the  basis  of  a  recognition  of  their 
freedom  and  independence  as  soon  as  proper  guarantees  can 
be  had  of  order  and  protection  to  property. 

Second,  that  the  Congress  of  the  United  States  shall  tender 
an  official  assurance  to  the  inhabitants  of  the  Philippine 
Islands  that  they  will  encourage  and  assist  in  the  organization 
of  such  a  government  in  the  islands  as  the  people  thereof  shall 
prefer,  and  that  upon  its  organization  in  stable  manner  the 
United  States,  in  accordance  with  its  traditional  and  prescrip- 
tive policy  in  such  cases,  will  recognize  the  independence  of- 
the  Philippines  and  its  equality  among  nations,  and  gradually 
withdraw  all  military  and  naval  forces. 


Signed : 


GEORGE  S.  BOUTWELL,  President 
FRANCIS  A.  OSBORN,  Treasurer 
ERVING  WIN  SLOW,  Secretary 


Charles  F.  Adams 
Felix  Adler 
Edward  Atkinson 
L.  W.  Bacon 
Samuel  Bowles 
Sam'l  Bradford 
John  C.  Bullitt 
D.  Caffery 
J.  G.  Carlisle 

w  Carnegie 
James  C.  Carter 
Grover  Cleveland 
W.  Bourke  Cochran 


F  ice-Presidents 

Patrick  A.  Collins 

Theo.  S.  Cuyler 

Geo.  F.  Edmunds 

Wm.  H.  Fleming 

Patrick  Ford 

Austen  G.  Fox 

Sam'l  Gompers 
/*/•  Thomas  Wentworth  Higginson 

Henry  U.  Johnson 

David  S.  Jordan 
^  Charlton  I.  Lewis 

George  G.  Mercet 

Herbert  Mayrick 

1:699] 


Appendix  E 


Patrick  O'Farrell  Edwin  Burritt  Smith 

H.  S.  Pingree  W.  G.  Sumner 

H.  C.  Potter  B.  R.  Tillman 

E.  Pretorius  John  J.  Valentine 

Henry  Wade  Rogers  Hermann  von  Hoist 

C.  Schurz  Herbert  Welsh 

John  Sherman 

Executive  Committee 

Winslow  Warren  Albert  S.  Parsons 

David  Greene  Haskins,  Jr.         J.  J.  Myers 
James  P.  Monroe 

A  later  published  list  adds  the  names  of  Reverdy  Johnson, 
Moorfield  Storey,  I.  J.  McGinity,  and  C.  H.  Parkhurst. 


C  700 


How  BARBARA  CAME  TO  EscoNDiTE1 

ONCE  there  was  a  little  girl  and  she  lived  all  alone  in  a  little 
house  up  in  the  woods  on  a  mountain,  and  the  little  house 
wasn't  any  bigger  than  this  room;  but  it  had  in  it  a  kitchen 
where  she  did  her  cooking,  and  a  little  dining  room  where  she 
ate  her  dinner,  and  a  little  bedroom  where  she  slept.  The  little 
bedroom  had  in  it  a  little  bed  for  the  little  girl  and  tiny  beds 
for  her  dolls.  And  there  were  tables,  dishes,  pictures  on  the 
walls,  and  little  electric  lights  to  light  up  her  room  with  when 
it  was  night  with  electricity  that  came  from  the  lightning. 

The  little  girl  had  three  little  dolls,  and  one  little  doll's  name 
was  Marguerite,  and  she  had  red  hair  and  lots  of  it,  and  it 
was  real  hair  too.  Another  little  doll's  name  was  Sally,  and 
she  had  black  hair  —  not  real  hair,  but  just  painted  on  —  and 
her  head  was  made  of  porcelain,  like  dishes.  The  other  little 
doll,  which  was  a  boy  doll,  and  a  Chinaman  at  that,  hadn't 
any  hair  at  all,  and  so  he  was  called  Old  Baldy. 

Lots  of  fairies  lived  near  this  little  girl  on  the  mountain, 
and  they  used  to  come  and  visit  her  and  sit  by  the  table  with 
her.  They  liked  the  little  girl  and  so  they  made  her  queen  of 
the  fairies.  And  out  around  the  woods  in  the  mountains  there 
were  many  coyotes.  They  troubled  the  fairies  very  much  and 
chased  them  in  the  night  when  they  were  dancing  on  the  green, 
and  then  all  the  little  fairies  would  scamper  off  to  their  holes, 
and  they  were  lucky  if  some  of  them  did  not  get  caught  by  the 
old  coyote. 

One  night  the  little  girl  was  sleeping  in  her  little  bed  in  the 
little  bedroom,  with  a  doll  on  each  side  of  her,  and  Old  Baldy 
across  the  foot  of  the  bed,  when  she  heard  a  big  coyote  come 
up  on  the  front  steps.  The  coyote  looked  into  the  window  and 
howled,  "Willie  wau  woo!  Willie  wau  woo!  Witp  hooh!" 
Then  he  howled  again  and  pushed  the  window  right  in  and 
came  in  to  where  the  little  girl  was.  The  little  girl  grabbed  her 
dolls,  so  that  the  coyote  would  not  get  them.  Then  she  took 
the  little  red-haired  doll  named  Marguerite,  and  when  the 

1  This  and  the  following  tales  are  reprinted  from  "The  Book  of  Knight  and 
Barbara,"  by  courtesy  of  the  publishers,  D.  Appleton  &  Co. 

3 


Appendix  F 


coyote  opened  his  mouth  wide  she  pushed  the  dolly  right  down 
his  throat.  The  red  hair  tickled  him  and  made  him  sneeze, 
and  he  sneezed  and  sneezed  until  he  sneezed  his  old  head  off. 
Then  the  little  girl  was  glad  and  she  got  up  and  took  the  coyote 
by  the  hind  leg  and  dragged  him  out  under  the  tree.  Then  she 
picked  up  his  old  head  and  carried  that  off,  too.  Then  she  went 
back  and  washed  the  coyote-stuff  all  off  from  the  floor.  When 
that  was  done  she  put  her  dollies  to  bed,  and  then  she  went 
to  sleep  again  herself.  When  the  other  coyotes  came  around 
in  the  night  and  saw  what  she  had  done,  they  were  very  much 
afraid. 

In  the  morning  when  the  fairies  found  it  out  they  were  very 
glad,  and  they  rubbed  fairy-stuff  on  the  doll  Marguerite  and 
made  her  alive  again.  Then  they  all  had  such  a  good  time  — 
the  little  girl  and  the  fairies  and  the  dolls.  They  cooked  and 
ate  and  played  in  the  grass,  and  the  coyotes  all  ran  away  from 
the  mountain  and  didn't  trouble  them  any  more. 
*»:  One  day  I  was  walking  in  the  woods  on  the  mountain  and 
I  saw  the  little  girl  asleep  on  the  grass.  So  I  woke  her  up  and 
took  her  on  my  back  and  walked  way  down  the  mountain  with 
her  and  along  the  road  clear  to  Escondite,  where  we  used  to 
live.  When  the  little  girl  got  to  Escondite,  she  looked  at  the 
trees  and  the  roses  and  the  monkeys  in  the  barn,  and  she  said 
she  would  stay  there.  And  she  has  lived  at  our  house  ever 
since.  When  the  fairies  came  around  her  little  house  in  the 
woods,  they  saw  that  the  little  girl  was  g6ne,  and  at  first  they 
felt  badly;  but  when  they  found  the  little  red-haired  doll 
named  Marguerite  they  made  her  their  queen  and  fixed  up  the 
little  house  very  nicely  for  her  and  for  Old  Baldy,  and  she  has 
been  queen  of  the  fairies  ever  since;  and  if  you  look  up  on  the 
mountain  on  a  dark  night  you  will  see  the  little  electric  lights 
that  shine  all  night  from  her  bedroom  window  so  that  the 
fairies  can  see  to  dance  on  the  grass. 

THE  LITTLE  LEGS  THAT  RAN  AWAY 

ONCE  there  was  a  little  girl  and  she  used  to  take  off  her  little 
legs  when  she  went  to  bed  at  night  and  put  them  with  her 
clothes  and  the  rest  of  her  things  in  a  chair.  And  one  night  the 
little  legs  got  uneasy  and  ran  away.  They  found  the  bedroom 
door  open;  so  they  ran  down  the  steps  into  the  garden  and 

n  702  n 


The  Eagle  and  the  Blue-tailed  Skink 

across  the  gravel  walk  out  into  the  fields,  and  away  so  far  no 
one  could  see  them.  When  the  little  girl  woke  up  in  the  morn- 
ing she  found  that  her  legs  were  gone;  so  she  couldn't  walk. 
And  she  began  to  cry  until  her  mother  came  in,  and  then  they 
looked  all  around  for  the  little  legs.  When  they  went  out  into 
the  garden,  they  saw  the  prints  on  the  gravel  which  the  little 
legs  had  made  on  going  out,  for  it  had  just  been  raining  and 
you  could  see  the  marks  quite  plainly.  So  her  father  saddled 
the  horses,  and  they  got  on  their  backs,  and  cantered  around 
all  over  the  fields  and  down  the  road  and  looked  for  the  little 
legs.  By  and  by  they  saw  something  running  by  the  side  of  the 
road  away  down  toward  the  Bay.  Then  they  whipped  up  the 
horses,  and  they  ran  very  fast,  and  the  father  got  off  from  his 
horse  and  caught  the  little  legs  just  as  they  were  getting  tangled 
in  a  barbed-wire  fence.  Then  he  picked  up  the  little  legs  and 
wrapped  them  in  a  soft  blanket  and  put  them  under  his  coat 
and  carried  them  home.  Then  they  fastened  them  on  again, 
so  that  the  little  girl  could  make  them  carry  her  around  any- 
where she  wanted  to  go;  and  ever  since  then  she  has  kept  them 
stuck  on  tight,  so  they  can't  get  away,  and  she  never,  never 
takes  them  off  at  night. 

THE  EAGLE  AND  THE  BLUE-TAILED  SKINK 

THERE  was  once  a  Blue-tailed  Skink,  and  he  sat  on  a  log  in 
the  sun  and  had  a  good  time,  and  on  top  of  the  tree  over  his 
head  there  was  a  big  bald  Eagle.  The  Eagle  watched  the  Blue- 
tailed  Skink  sitting  on  the  log  in  the  sun,  until  she  thought  k 
was  time  to  eat  him.  Then  she  swooped  down  on  him.  When 
the  Skink  saw  the  Eagle  coming  he  gave  a  jump  forward,  so 
that  when  the  Eagle  got  down  there  she  just  caught  the  end 
of  his  tail.  The  tail  of  the  Skink  will  come  off  if  you  catch  hold 
of  it.  It  is  made  and  put  on  that  way.  So  the  Skink  left  the 
Eagle  with  the  tail  in  her  claws.  He  was  all  right  himself,  and 
he  ran  down  the  side  of  the  log  while  the  Eagle  ate  up  the  tail. 
Then  the  Blue-tailed  Skink  looked  up  the  tree  and  saw 
where  high  in  the  crotch  of  the  tree  the  Eagle  had  a  nest.  In 
the  nest  were  four  eggs.  So  the  Skink  ran  up  the  side  of  the 
tree  to  the  nest.  Then  he  looked  down  and  saw  the  Eagle  on 
the  log  eating  up  his  tail.  So  he  ate  up  the  four  eggs  that  the 

C  703  3 


Appendix  F 


Eagle  had  laid  in  her  nest,  and  he  said:  "There  is  just  enough 
meat  in  these  eggs  to  make  me  a  new  tail." 

The  Eagle  saw  the  Skink  sitting  in  the  nest  on  the  tree;  so 
she  flew  up  to  seize  him.  But  the  Skink  ran  down  on  the  other 
side.  When  the  Eagle  got  back  to  her  nest  she  saw  that  the 
eggs  were  gone,  and  she  said:  "I've  eaten  the  Skink' s  tail, 
and  there  is  just  enough  meat  in  that  tail  to  make  me  four  new 
eggs." 

The  Skink  lay  down  in  the  shade  under  the  log  until  he  had 
grown  another  blue  tail,  and  when  he  had  done  this,  then  he 
ran  back  up  on  the  log  and  sat  in  the  sun.  The  Eagle  laid  four 
more  eggs  in  the  nest  and  watched  the  Skink.  Very  soon  the 
Eagle  jumped  down  to  catch  him.  She  got  the  Skink  by  the 
end  of  the  tail  and  the  tail  came  off.  Then  the  Skink  ran  away 
and  saw  the  Eagle  munching  his  tail,  and  the  tail  squirmed 
while  the  Eagle  munched  it.  Then  the  Skink  ran  up  the  tree 
to  the  Eagle's  nest  and  saw  four  eggs  there.  So  he  ate  the  eggs; 
and  the  Eagle  had  the  tail  and  the  Skink  had  the  eggs,  and  they 
were  ready  to  start  over  again.  For  there  was  meat  enough 
in  the  tail  to  make  four  more  eggs,  and  meat  enough  in  the 
eggs  to  make  another  blue  tail. 

"And  so,"  remarked  Barbara  sympathetically,  "the  Blue- 
tailed  Skink  never  lost  his  tail  forever." 

THE  SIEGE  OF  TROY 
(From  an  ancient  manuscript) 

There  once  were  some  Trojans,  of  course, 
So  we  Greeks  built  a  big  wooden  horse; 

Agamemnon  x  did  grin 

As  we  boys  clambered  in, 
And  he  said:  "How  is  this  for  a  horse?" 

We  painted  the  beast  black  and  red, 
And  Aggie,  he  waggled  its  head, 

While  behind  for  a  tail 

Nestor's  whiskers  did  trail; 
But  we  might  have  used  pea  straw  instead. 

1  Recent  researches  having  shown  that  Achilles,  the  original  hero,  could 
not  have  been  present  on  this  occasion,  because  of  an  injured  heel,  a  classical 
authority  has  suggested  the  substitution  of  Agamemnon  as  the  next  in  command. 

n  704  3 


The  Siege  of  Troy 


Then  we  fixed  up  four  legs  for  the  horse, 
And  they  made  me  a  fore-leg,  of  course; 

With  Epeus  and  Pyrrhy, 

And  Patsei  Olyri, 
We  trotted  him  round  on  his  course. 

We  tied  the  great  horse  to  a  tree; 
Then  the  Trojans  all  came  out  to  see; 

But  never  a  squeak 

Did  they  hear  from  a  Greek. 
"All  aphone  now,"  says  Nestor,  says  he. 

Then  the  Trojans  all  chortled  for  joy 
As  they  led  the  great  horse  into  Troy; 

But  the  Greeks  hid  within 

Lay  silent  as  sin, 
For  we  would  not  surprise  or  annoy. 

To  a  big  poplar  tree  in  the  park 
They  tied  the  big  horse  just  at  dark; 

They  called  him  Old  Charley, 

And  gave  him  some  barley, 
That  he  might  not  be  biting  the  bark. 

Then  they  locked  up  the  old  city  gate, 
And  before  the  town  clock  had  struck  eight, 

They  were  all  safe  in  bed, 

For  every  one  said: 
"'Tis  time  to  re-cu-per-ate." 


When  Sleep  spread  her  wings  over  Troy 
And  Hypnos  her  arts  did  employ, 

Then  from  out  the  big  horse, 

We  Greeks  crawled,  of  course; 
And  we  reddened  the  town  in  our  joy. 

While  the  Trojans  still  peacefully  slept, 
In  their  chambers  we  stealthily  crept, 

And  each  Trojan  of  course, 

We  removed  to  the  horse, 
Then  the  bolt  through  its  fastening  slipped. 

C7053 


Appendix  F 


When  the  Trojans  were  all  stowed  inside, 
Said  Aggie:  "Now  give  them  a  ride!" 

Through  the  great  city  gate 

The  horse  started  straight, 
And  we  left  him  alone  in  his  pride. 

Then  Aggie,  he  led  us  on  foot 

To  the  sign  of  the  "Horns  of  the  Goat," 

Then  to  Bacchus  did  homage, 

With  incident  damage 
To  the  skins  at  the  Inn  of  the  Goat! 

The  night  thus  wore  wearily  on 

Till  it  came  to  its  end  with  the  dawn, 

When  eager-lipped  Eos         ', 

Kissed  snow-mantled  Chios, 
And  awakened  Aurora  the  Dawn. 

Then  the  Trojans  got  up,  rubbed  their  eyes, 
And  each  said:  "Well,  this  is  a  surprise. 

I  was  safe  in  my  bed, 

But  now  I've  been  fed 
To  this  monster  in  equine  disguise!" 

And  the  Trojans  believe  to  this  day, 

That  the  beast  which  thus  bore  them  away 

Had  got  loose  in  the  night, 

Not  being  tied  tight, 
And  had  swallowed  them  all  in  his  play! 


G 

BRIEF  MENTION  OF  CERTAIN  GRADUATES  OF  STANFORD 
UNIVERSITY  BETWEEN  1892  AND  1899 

I  DO  not  feel  satisfied  to  let  this  volume  pass  out  of  my 
hands  without  some  further  notice  of  early  students  of 
Stanford  University.  But  to  cite  the  many  hundreds 
who  gayly  came  and  sadly  went  would  make  a  list  of 
unseemly  length.  I  shall  therefore  limit  reference  to 
some  three  score  who  finished  their  college  work  before 
1900,  at  the  same  time  including  practically  no  one  men- 
tioned elsewhere  in  my  life  story.  Yet  it  is  still  a*  diffi- 
cult task,  particularly  so  because  selections  must  be  more 
or  less  arbitrary  and  based  to  a  large  degree  on  continued 
association  during  recent  years.  Nevertheless,  my  wife 
comforts  me  with  the  thought  that  a  woman  rarely 
gives  a  big  party  without  forgetting  to  invite  her  dearest 
friend  or  her  nearest  neighbor.1 

Le  Roy  Abrams,  '99,  botanist,  associate  professor  of  Systematic  Botany, 
assistant  and  successor  to  Professor  Dudley;  Maxwell  Adams,  '95,  professor 
of  Chemistry  in  the  University  of  Nevada;  Dr.  George  H.  Ashley,  '92,  long 
connected  with  the  United  States  Geological  Survey,  now  state  geologist  of 
Pennsylvania;  William  S.  Atkinson,  '99,  scientific  illustrator  for  the  depart- 
ments of  Zoology  and  Botany  at  Stanford;  Arthur  H.  Barnhisel,  '93,  in  busi- 
ness in  Tacoma;  Frank  G.  Baum,  '98,  one  of  the  leading  electrical  engineers 
in  the  West,  for  a  time  assistant  professor  on  the  Stanford  faculty;  Louis  S. 
Beedy,  '98,  attorney  in  San  Francisco;  Henry  M.  Bland,  '95,  now  professor 
of  English  in  the  San  Jose  Normal  School;  Benjamin  F.  Bledsoe,  '96,  attorney, 
now  judge  of  the  Federal  Court  in  the  southern  district  of  California;  Hans 
F.  Blichfeldt,  '96,  originally  from  Slesvig,  a  student  of  remarkable  ability 
in  Mathematics,  in  which  field  he  rose  to  occupy  a  professorship  at  Stanford. 

William  D.  Briggs,  '96,  called  back  to  Stanford  in  1906,  now  associate 
professor  in  English;  Susan  B.  Bristol,  '97,  for  years  appointment  secretary 
at  Stanford,  now  in  journalism  in  New  York;  Lyman  V.  W.  Brown,  '96,  a 
prominent  orchardist  of  Riverside;  James  T.  Burcham,  '97,  for  some  years 
a  member  of  the  Stanford  Law  faculty,  now  an  attorney  at  Spokane;  Scott 
Calhoun,  '95,  an  attorney  at  Seattle;  Bertha  L.  Chapman  (Mrs.  V.  M.  Cady), 

1  See  also  Chapter  XVH,  pages  405-413. 

C7073 


Appendix  G 


'95,  a  leading  apostle  of  nature  study  and  lecturer  on  Hygiene,  now  at  Chico, 
California;  Newton  Cleaveland,  '99,  once  instructor  in  Physiology  at  Stanford, 
now  superintendent  of  mining  construction;  Mel  T.  Cook,  '94,  professor  of 
Botany  in  Rutgers  College;  Rheinart  P.  Cowles,  '99,  professor  of  Zoology  at 
Johns  Hopkins;  Charles  E.  Cox,  '93,  for  nine  years  instructor  and  assistant 
professor  in  Mathematics  at  Stanford,  now  engaged  in  business  in  San  Francisco; 
Frank  Cramer,  '93,  sometime  assistant  in  Zoology  at  Stanford,  founder  of  the 
Manzanita  School  for  boys  at  Palo  Alto;  Wesley  C.  Crandall,  '99,  research  natu- 
ralist, Scripps  Marine  Station,  San  Diego;  Rennie  W.  Doane,  '96,  associate 
professor  of  Entomology  at  Stanford,  an  expert  in  Economic  Entomology. 

Jefferson  Elmore,  '95,  associate  professor  in  Latin  at  Stanford;  James 
Ferguson,  '99,  now  principal  of  the  Chico  High  School;  Charles  A.  Fife,  '94, 
a  leading  physician  of  Philadelphia;  Forrest  S.  Fisher,  '99,  an  attorney  in  Port- 
land; Myron  A.  Folsom,  '96,  an  authority  on  mining  law,  now  an  oil  producer; 
Walter  Fong,  '96,  a  student  of  Economics  of  high  ability,  president  of  Lee  Sing 
College,  Hongkong,  at  the  time  of  his  death  in  1906;  Benjamin  O.  Foster,  '95, 
associate  professor  of  Latin  at  Stanford;  Lewis  R.  Freeman,  ex-'99,  athlete, 
traveler,  and  war  correspondent;  Charles  W.  Greene,  '92,  for  some  years  associate 
professor  of  Physiology  at  Stanford,  now  professor  in  the  University  of  Mis- 
souri; Howard  J.  Hall,  '96,  assistant  professor  of  English  at  Stanford;  Alice  N. 
Hays,  '96,  since  graduation  one  of  the  mainstays  of  the  Stanford  Library;  Clark 
W.  Hetherington,  '95,  instructor  in  Organic  Training  at  Stanford,  sometime  pro- 
fessor in  the  University  of  Missouri,  later  in  that  of  Wisconsin,  more  recently 
director  of  Physical  Education  for  California;  Franklin  Hichborn,  ex-'95,  a 
leader  in  the  work  of  Social  Sanitation;  Brodie  G.  Higley,  '99,  attorney  in  New 
York;  Harold  P.  Hill,  '98,  professor  of  Medicine,  Stanford  Medical  College; 
Lester  H.  Hinsdale,  '95,  one  of  the  famous  "Three  H's,"  Hinsdale,  Hoover, 
and  Hicks  —  the  "barbarian  combination"  which  broke  down  extreme 
fraternity  domination  at  Stanford  —  now  an  attorney  in  San  Francisco. 

Agnes  Howe,  '97,  superintendent  of  schools  of  Santa  Clara  County;  John 
A.  Keating,  '94,  bank  president  in  Portland;  William  W.  Kemp,  '98,  for  some 
years  professor  of  Education  in  the  University  of  California,  now  president 
of  the  San  Jose  Normal  School;  Dexter  S.  Kimball,  '96,  assistant  professor 
of  Mechanical  Engineering  at  Stanford,  then  professor  at  Cornell,  now  dean 
of  the  Sibley  College  of  Mechanic  Arts  and  during  part  of  the  war  period  acting 
president  of  Cornell;  Susan  M.  Kingsbury,  '99,  now  director  of  Social  Economy 
and  Social  Research  at  Bryn  Mawr;  Victor  H.  Klauber,  '98,  in  business,  San 
Diego;  Frederick  G.  Krauss,  ex-*95,  an  agriculturist  in  Hawaii;  Shinkai  Ku- 
wana,  '99,  for  some  time  instructor  in  Entomology  at  Stanford,  now  imperial 
entomologist  of  Japan,  and  president  of  the  Stanford  Club  of  Tokyo;  Homer 
Laughlin,  Jr.,  '96,  manufacturer,  Los  Angeles;  Chloe  F.  Lesley  (Mrs.  E.  C. 
Starks),  ex-'98,  now  assistant  professor  of  Graphic  Arts  at  Stanford;  Everett  P. 
Lesley,  '97,  her  brother,  now  professor  of  Mechanical  Engineering  at  Stanford; 
Charles  R.  Lewers,  '96,  assistant  professor  of  Law  at  Stanford  for  six  years, 
attorney  of  the  Southern  Pacific  Company  at  the  time  of  his  recent  death; 
George  W.  A.  Luckey,  '94,  for  many  years  professor  of  Education  in  the 
University  of  Nebraska,  now  agent  of  the  Federal  Bureau  of  Education  for 
research  work  in  Europe. 

Annie  Lyle,  '95,  San  Francisco  physician,  specialist  in  the  care  of  women 


Brief  Mention  of  Graduates,  1892-99 

and  children;  Dorsey  A.  Lyon,  '98,  U.  S.  Bureau  of  Mines;  Frank  M. 
McFarland,  '93,  professor  of  Histology  at  Stanford;  Richard  C.  McGregor,  '98, 
ornithologist  of  the  Bureau  of  Science  in  the  Philippines;  Duncan  MacKinnon, 
'99,  banker,  San  Diego;  Anne  Martin,  '96,  for  some  years  professor  of 
History  in  the  University  of  Nevada,  an  active  worker  in  the  campaign  for 
women's  suffrage,  with  prospects  of  becoming  United  States  Senator  from 
Nevada;  Stephen  I.  Miller,  '98,  sometime  assistant  professor  of  Economics 
at  Stanford,  now  dean  of  the  School  of  Commerce,  University  of  Washing- 
ton; Will  S.  Monroe,  '94,  teacher  and  traveler,  an  authority  on  the 
Balkans,  professor  in  the  State  Normal  School  at  Montclair,  N.  J.;  John 
F.  Newsom,  '92,  for  some  years  professor  of  Mining  at  Stanford,  now  engaged 
in  professional  work  outside;  Mrs.  Anne  E.  Peck,  '98,  good  neighbor;  George 
C.  Price  (Ph.D.  '97),  for  many  years  professor  of  Comparative  Anatomy  at 
Stanford;  William  W.  Price,  '97,  naturalist,  founder  of  the  Agassiz  School  for 
boys,  now  proprietor  of  the  summer  camp  at  Fallen  Leaf  Lake;  Karl  G. 
Rendtorff,  '94,  formerly  a  student  at  the  University  of  Kiel,  who  upon  his 
graduation  from  Stanford  was  appointed  to  its  department  of  German,  in 
which  he  made  his  doctorate  and  now  remains  as  professor. 

Jackson  E.  Reynolds,  '96,  a  noted  athlete,  for  some  years  member  of  the 
Law  Faculty  of  Stanford,  later  in  that  of  Columbia,  now  president  of  the 
First  National  Bank  of  New  York  City;  Harry  B.  Reynolds,  '96,  his  brother 
and  classmate,  practicing  physician  in  Palo  Alto;  Robert  C.  Root,  '94,  teacher 
of  Economics,  for  years  local  secretary  in  California  of  the  American  Peace 
Society;  Margaret  Schallenberger  (Mrs.  John  McNaught),  '98,  for  a  time 
instructor  in  Education  at  Stanford,  afterward  teacher  in  the  State  Normal 
School  at  San  Jose,  and  still  active  in  state  educational  supervision;  George  W. 
Scott,  '96,  sometime  professor  of  International  Law  at  Columbia,  a  special 
student  of  Mexican  affairs,  now  in  business  in  Los  Angeles;  Edward  C.  Sewall, 
'98,  now  professor  in  the  division  of  surgery  in  the  Stanford  Medical  School; 
Henry  D.  Sheldon,  '96,  now  professor  of  Education  in  the  University  of  Oregon; 
Perry  O.  Simons,  ex-'98,  zoologist,  who  after  making  extensive  collections  in 
Peru  and  Bolivia  was  murdered  by  brigands  on  the  Bolivia-Argentina  frontier. 

David  Snedden,  '97,  professor  of  Education  in  Columbia,  sometime  state 
commissioner  of  education  of  Massachusetts;  William  F.  Snow,  '96,  for  some 
years  professor  of  Hygiene  at  Stanford,  now  secretary  of  the  American  Hygiene 
Association;  Charles  D.  Snyder,  '96,  professor  of  Physiology  in  Johns  Hopkins; 
Alfred  B.  Spalding,  '96,  now  professor  of  Gynecology  and  Obstetrics  at  Stanford. 

Henrietta  L.  Stadtmiiller,  '95,  whose  gay  wit  and  friendly  vivacity  still 
enliven  all  Stanford  gatherings  in  San  Francisco  or  on  the  Campus;  Herbert 
S.  Stark,  '95,  distinguished  mining  engineer,  died  in  the  Transvaal,  1910; 
Herman  D.  Stearns,  '92,  associate  professor  of  Physics  at  the  time  of  his  death 
in  1907;  Laura  Steffens  (Mrs.  Allen  H.  Suggett),  '96,  long  assistant  in  the 
State  Library  at  Sacramento,  now  in  charge  of  the  Sutro  Library  in  San  Fran- 
cisco; Nettie  M.  Stevens,  '99,  one  of  the  ablest  scientific  investigators  devel- 
oped at  Stanford,  associate  in  Experimental  Morphology  at  Bryn  Mawr  until 
her  death  in  1912;  Thomas  A.  Storey,  '96,  sometime  assistant  professor  of 
Organic  Training  at  Stanford,  now  professor  of  Hygiene  in  the  College 
of  the  City  of  New  York;  Henry  Suzzallo,  '99,  formerly  assistant  professor 
of  Education  at  Stanford,  later  professor  at  Columbia,  now  president  of  the 

C  709  3 


Appendix  G 


University  of  Washington;  Robert  E.  Swain,  '99,  professor  of  Chemistry  at 
Stanford,  on  the  faculty  since  1903;  Carl  C.  Thomas,  ex-*95,  f°r  some  years 
dean  of  the  Engineering  School  of  Johns  Hopkins,  engineer  and  constructor. 

Chester  A.  Thomas,  '98,  prominent  mining  engineer,  recently  deceased; 
John  Van  Denburgh,  '94,  practicing  physician  of  San  Francisco,  a  high  author- 
ity on  American  reptiles;  Royall  Victor,  'oo,  high  in  the  legal  profession  of 
New  York  City;  Arthur  W.  Washburn,  '93,  and  Mrs.  Jessica  Thompson  Wash- 
burn,  '92,  founders  of  the  Washburn  School  in  San  Jose;  Hutton  Webster,  '96, 
professor  of  Anthropology  in  the  University  of  Nebraska;  Albert  C.  Whitaker, 
'99,  professor  of  Economics  at  Stanford,  on  the  faculty  since  1902;  ClarVe  B. 
Whittier,  '93,  professor  of  Law  at  Stanford,  sometime  professor  in  the  University 
of  Chicago;  and  Evelyn  Wight  (Mrs.  Mansfield  Allan),  '96,  first  dean  of  women 
at  Stanford,  in  which  capacity  she  served  from  1908  to  1916,  now  principal  of 
the  Girls'  Commercial  High  School  in  Brooklyn. 

In  a  class  by  themselves  stand  "the  Doles."  Belonging  to  a  well-known  mis- 
sionary family  of  Hawaii,  they  are  thus  nephews  and  nieces  of  Sanford  B. 
Dole,  long  president  of  the  island  republic,  and  cousins  of  the  Rev.  Charles 
F.  Dole  of  Boston.  Eight  of  the  thirteen  children,  six  sons  and  two  daughters, 
graduated  from  Stanford  between  1895  and  1911,  and  one  more  spent  three 
years  with  us,  then  going  elsewhere  for  special  work  in  Agriculture.  All  were 
remarkable  for  sturdiness  of  character  and  high  scholarship  joined  to  unusual 
athletic  ability.  The  Coast  record  for  pole  vaulting  was  held  for  about  six 
years  by  Charles  Sumner  Dole,  '99,  the  first  of  the  men  to  enter  Stanford, 
now  planter,  district  magistrate,  and  editor  on  the  island  of  Kauai.  Norman 
E.  Dole,  '04,  made  and  apparently  still  holds  the  world  record  for  the  high 
vault  with  a  rigid  pole,  though  his  mark  has  since  been  passed  by  others  who 
used  an  elastic  bamboo. 


1:7103 


A    man   whose  days  have  been  filled  with   enduring 

service  reveals  in   these  pages  much  of  the  secret 

of  a  real  science   of  living.     The  publishers 

have  endeavored  to  preserve  his  memoirs 

tn  a  form  worthy  of  his  contributions 

to  the  progress  and  happiness  of 

mankind — of  his  application 

of  the  world's  knowledge 

to  the   world's   needs 


THIS  BOOK  WAS  DESIGNED  AND  ARRANGED  BY  THE 
EDITORIAL  AND  ART  DEPARTMENTS  OF  THE  WORLD 
BOOK  COMPANY,  YONKERS-ON  HUDSON,  NEW  YORK, 
AND  WAS  PRINTED  UNDER  THE  DIRECTION  OF  ITS 
MANUFACTURING  DEPARTMENT,  AT  THE  CONDE 
NAST  PRESS,  GREENWICH,  CONNECTICUT,  AND 
BOUND  AT  THE  PLIMPTON  PRESS,  NORWOOD, 
MASSACHUSETTS 


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